


Run into the Bright Lights

by peanutbutterapple



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Angst, April Fool's Day, Blood, Canon compliant for the most part, Fluff, Friends to Lovers, Jealousy, M/M, Mischief, Misunderstandings, Near Death Experiences, Pining, There's a ball and everyone gets pretty because I'm self-indulgent, but not that much blood just enough that I'd feel bad for not warning
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-29
Updated: 2017-11-13
Packaged: 2019-01-26 00:42:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 36,839
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12544968
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/peanutbutterapple/pseuds/peanutbutterapple
Summary: Keith was pretty sure his heart was going to explode out of his chest and if he didn’t do something about it, things were going to get bloodier than they already were.Keith accidentally tells Lance his feelings on April Fool's Day, and Lance really knows how to take a joke.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> So I started this back in April with the idea that it would be a light little fluffy fic, probably no more than 4k and not too late for April Fool's Day, but then I kept writing and....7 months later HERE WE ARE. Plot was not supposed to happen and yet somehow it did. This story is entirely written, but I will be posting it in three parts as I edit. I should have the next part up in about a week, and the last part up soon after. 
> 
> Since it was started 7 months ago, everything in this takes place pre-seasons 3 & 4\. Sorry, Black Lion/Marmora Keith, you're still flying Red. 
> 
> And thank you to my best friend Katie for reading this and editing this and bearing with me when I sent her a trillion texts about how this was the worst thing ever written. And for her telling me no, this is in fact not the worst thing ever written, give me more Klance angst. 
> 
> And lastly, the title is from the song "Last Day Alive" by the Chainsmokers.

“Okay, so if they move to the purple square, we’ll counterattack by moving our piece to the yellow circle.”

Lance kept his voice low, holding his hand over his mouth so only Keith could hear. The expanse of stars beyond the window beside him stretched immeasurably. Keith’s eyes focused on a stray lock of hair that stuck out over the shell of Lance’s ear.

“Why not the green triangle?” Keith murmured back, sliding his eyes back to the game. It would earn them a point and a bonus turn. The yellow circle docked them a point, but gave them the ability to decide their opponent’s next move. 

Keith turned his eyes back to Lance, watching quietly as Lance studied the board, considering, mind working behind his eyes. On the other side of the table, Pidge and Hunk were whispering to one another behind their own hands.

Finally, Lance shook his head. “Then we’ll have no choice but to move to the blue oval. Hunk’ll give us another obscure question about the culinary arts.”

Keith nodded, looking back at the board. They were in the lead, but with no help from Hunk’s trivia questions.

Lance leaned in slightly closer. Keith could feel edge of his breath on his cheek. “If we take the yellow circle, we can- ”

“ -move them to the black pentagon and they’ll lose five points,” Keith said, eyes catching on that particular path their piece could take. He nodded.

Lance smirked, but made no comment. He leaned back on the couch they shared, waiting for Pidge and Hunk to make their move. He sat close enough that their shoulders brushed.

The window stretched around the room, a span of glass that held a battleground of stars, shifting planets and endless galaxies. Deep black holes, enormous weblums and countless Galra ships.

Lance’s shoulder shifted against his. Keith’s nerve endings burned down to his fingertips.

Unbidden, the recollection of pressing against Lance in the Mackoshian market came back to him, swirling in his brain a memory of color, sweltering heat, and unbearably warm skin. The very place they had found the board game to begin with.

 

*

 

Allura had stationed them on Mackoshia.  It was a dry, dusty planet that was home to a kind, serene alien people with deep blue skin and glowing gold hair. Their bodies were tall and sinewy with two sets of arms attached to two-fingered hands. Their faces featured three wide eyes that glittered like diamonds. 

It was an important stop, and Allura and Coran were determined to reaffirm their alliance with them in the fight against Zarkon. Keith soon realized that the Mackoshians approached everything slowly, taking their time to be thorough, and it had taken a series of meetings over the span of several days to conclude their plans with them.

Normally, Keith might have grown impatient with this, but he’d found himself enjoying the dusty, peaceful planet. The three pinpricks of yellow suns shone high and bright in the sky, the source of the unusual heat.  They glinted down at him like jewels set in a blue sky much paler than Earth’s sky, but blue nonetheless. Everything was hot sand and tall, narrow shelters made from rocks of every color, stale air surrounding them, and more sun, sun, sun.

“It kind of reminds me of home,” Keith said on their last day, when they had ventured out into the village to see the market stalls at the Mackoshian Chief’s suggestion. While Allura, Coran, and Shiro stayed behind at the Castle to plan their next planetary destination, the four younger Paladins set out.

Keith had said it to no one in particular, but Lance looked over at him. He’d had his shirt sleeves pinned up at the shoulders with little sparkly clips he’d found back in the castle that Allura had probably used for her hair, and his pants were rolled up to the knees. Even Keith, sweating stickily beneath his black t-shirt, had forgone his jacket in the heat of the suns. Lance’s exposed skin glistened smooth and brown.

While Lance was the one who had looked up in interest, it was Pidge who said “I hate deserts.”  She looked disgruntled beneath the wide brim of a hat, courtesy of Coran, that made her look ready to trek through a jungle. Her arms were a dangerous shade of pink.

“The Garrison is in the desert,” Hunk pointed out. He too had shed his extra layers and was deepening into a pleasant shade of brown.

“Yeah, but I only went outside at _night_ ,” Pidge said. “When the sun was down.”

“I love the sun,” Lance said, putting his arms behind his head and turning his face up to the sky, a smile on his lips. “It’s good for the complexion. I wish we could have three of them all the time.”

“Says _you_ ,” said Pidge. “I hate being hot.”

Keith said nothing. He felt strangely content.

The market was a maze of color, tinkling sounds, happy chatter, and sluggish movement. Mackoshians took their time inspecting every trinket for sale, carefully engaged with every object, deliberated for longer than necessary in front of food stalls. Strange pendulums glittered brighter than their eyes. Music wheels spun tranquil tunes. Clothing made out of a thin, sheer material, dyed every color imaginable caught the sunlight at every angle. 

The crowd was hot and constricting, and the Mackoshians – the shortest of which still beat Allura and Coran by a head – towered over them as they joined the crowd. Pidge and Hunk quickly disappeared when they’d spotted a stall glittering with new electronics.

Keith found himself navigating the tightly packed aisles alongside Lance, pressed arm-to-arm by the crowd, skin sweating and sticky and much too warm where they touched.

Lance stopped in front of a stall of what looked to be children’s toys and nudged Keith in the side.

Keith glanced up, distracted, and found himself looking into the sparkling eyes of a pretty Mackoshian woman.

Something tight lurched in Keith’s chest. He felt his face darken, ready to lean over and hiss that Lance could be his own wingman, but when he looked at Lance, he realized that Lance wasn’t paying attention to the girl at all.

“Check this out,” Lance said, picking up a small box from the stall.

Keith pushed his sweaty hair out of his eyes. “What is it?”

“I think it’s a board game.” Lance said, peeking inside the box. When he looked up, his eyes were bright. “It’s been, like, ten decafeebs since I’ve played a board game. Zarkon’s been taking up all my free time.”

Keith shrugged. “So buy it.”

Lance put his thumb and forefinger to his chin, as if considering it, before he broke out in a wide grin. He looked back at Keith. “Okay, but that means you’re playing it with me.” 

Keith didn’t argue. He watched as Lance bought the game from the Mackoshian girl with some of the money Coran had given each of them. The exchange was easy and friendly, Lance ever the conversationalist, and then he had the game in his hands and was turning back to Keith.

“What’s wrong?” Lance asked, raising his eyebrows when his eyes landed on Keith.

Keith blinked. “What?”

“You’re all-” He wiggled his fingers at Keith’s face, “frowny. What, are you mad at me for wasting the money Coran gave me? You _told_ me to buy this. And I do what I want.”  

This time Keith actually felt the frown on his face. “I’m not mad.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes.”

“Well, I guess it’s not different from how you usually look.” Lance shrugged. Before Keith could argue, he wrapped a warm hand around Keith’s wrist and tugged him on to the next stall, nearly buried in a selection of airy scarves. Despite the heat, it took no time before Lance had four of the scarves wrapped around his neck, consulting a mirror and conversing with the elderly Mackoshian man in charge of the stall about which color complemented his complexion best.

“Which do you think?” Lance said, turning on Keith.

Keith, who hadn’t realized he’d silently been admiring the way the pale, shimmering blue one made Lance’s eyes look, jolted at being asked his opinion and with dizzying speed, suddenly grasped why he had felt strange about Lance’s interaction with the girl at the previous stall.

He hadn’t flirted with her.

Keith felt himself frown again. Lance narrowed his eyes. “Do scarves make you angry, too?”

“No,” Keith said, but Lance was still looking at him suspiciously.

He hadn’t flirted with the girl, _at all._

Keith realized, suddenly, that his chest felt as light and airy as the scarves draped around Lance’s shoulders. He heard himself say, “The blue one.”

Now it was Lance’s turn to frown. “Are you just saying that because I’m the Blue Paladin?”

“No.”

“You always see me in blue. You’re probably biased.”

Looking at Lance, his cheeks flushed from the heat and his shoulders draped in color, Keith realized, as his own heart pattered unsteadily beneath his shallow, sticky skin, that he probably, really, was.

Keith scowled. “You asked, and I gave you my opinion.”

“That’s true, but you also wear your belt on top of your shirt, so.” Lance turned back to the elderly man.

“It’s a _utility_ belt,” Keith said hotly.

In the end, Lance bought the blue scarf, and Keith lent him some of his own share of the money for it.

“You’re my favorite Paladin, you know. And that includes myself. And Hunk,” said Lance.

“Just take it.”

“Next time we’re at one of these places, I’ll buy you a new belt. It’s an I.O.U.”

“I don’t _want_ a new belt.”

Lance ignored him. “Or this,” he said, spotting a scarf a deep shade of navy blue, bordering on gray. Lance picked it up and held it beside Keith’s face, thoughtful. “It matches your eyes.”

Keith blinked.

And then Lance blushed, a pretty pink that even Keith could tell wasn’t from the heat. But he smiled, a sweet upturn of the lips, and held Keith’s eyes for a heartbeat too long.

Keith didn’t understand anything.

 

*

 

Except, maybe, he did.

Lance’s elbow was sharp against his side as he leaned forward over the game board, shooting electricity up Keith’s spine.

Pidge moved her and Hunk’s piece to the purple square. Lance immediately moved his and Keith’s piece to the yellow circle and grinned. “Yellow circle means we choose your next move, so kindly escort your piece to the black pentagon, please and thank you.”

Hunk groaned. “Pidge, I really wanted to beat them.”

Pidge frowned and shoved their piece to the black pentagon as Keith docked five points from the little piece of paper they’d been keeping score with.

Pidge sighed. “But Hunk, if we didn’t move to the purple square, we’d have had no choice but to take the red rhombus and lose five _turns.”_

Hunk frowned and sat back in his seat. “They’re cheating.”

Keith looked up. “We all made up the rules.”

“I’ve got them written right here, feel free to consult them,” said Lance, gesturing to another small slip of paper covered in his own slanted scrawl. Upon opening the box, they had quickly realized they couldn’t read a word of the directions. But Lance, who never gave up that easily, encouraged them to mold it to their own design, and it turned out to be a rather fantastical chess game.

“Well, it’s rigged,” said Hunk.

“You guys literally forced us to be a team because you thought we’d fight instead of play well,” said Keith, raising an eyebrow.

“Suckaaas,” said Lance, and held out a hand. Without looking, Keith high fived it.

Hunk groaned.

Pidge leaned forward, eyes narrowed in new determination. The stars out the window ere reflected in her glasses. “The game’s not over yet.”

It lasted ten more minutes. 

“Ha, victory!” Lance shouted. He grabbed Keith’s wrist and shoved his arm up into the air, pulling him half off the couch. When Keith looked over, Lance was smiling hugely.

Lance had let go of Keith’s hand before he, too, realized that he was grinning.

“I demand a rematch,” said Hunk. Pidge was leaning back in her seat, arms crossed, pouting.

Lance yawned. “Maybe another night, buddy.” He stretched his arms over his head. Keith didn’t mean for his eyes to be drawn to the sliver of dark skin beneath the hem of his shirt. “But I’m outlawing trivia questions about cooking. Unless you’re on my team.”

“Hey,” Keith said without thinking, glancing back up.

Lance turned to look at him with eyes unexpectedly bright. “Don’t worry Keith, we’ll always be the dream team. I’m just assuming you’re in a healing pod with a life-threatening injury after a battle against Zarkon.”

“And while you’re waiting for me to recover you play board games?” Keith said dryly, but he could feel the side of his mouth twitching.

“Well, we’re not going to just stand around,” said Lance, shrugging. “But I’ll be there to catch you when you come out of the pod.” And he winked at Keith.

Actually _winked._

Keith felt himself flush before he could help it, heart stuttering in his chest. He couldn’t think of a response to that.

He felt Lance pat his knee, just briefly. “Well, good game, but I’m off to get some beauty sleep.” The couch cushions lifted with sudden absence as he stood up.

“You’ll probably need it,” muttered Pidge. 

Lance put a hand to his heart. “You wound me, Pidge. You’re lucky I’m still riding off the high of victory.”

His eyes met Keith’s one last time, a lazy smile on his face, eyes holding for a moment that seemed to stretch. 

Keith’s eyes trailed Lance until he’d disappeared from the room.

“You know,” he heard Pidge say across from him, and Keith around looked at her, blinking rapidly. “I’d tell you to tell him how you feel, but I have a hunch that the two of you would only become more obnoxious than you already are.” 

“What?” Keith said blankly.

“No offense, but you and Lance are the _worst_ ,” said Hunk, leaning forward to start putting the game back in its box.

Keith drew his eyebrows together. “What are you talking about?”

“It was bad enough when we only had to deal with Lance’s flirting on missions, or back when he wouldn’t shut up about Allura, but this is just nauseating,” Pidge said. She smiled slightly. “Because you actually _like_ it.”

Keith felt the flush of embarrassment return, sweeping up his neck at Pidge’s words.

“I- I don’t- that’s ridiculous,” he said, trying to reign in control of himself.

Hunk paused with the game in his hands to look up at him. “Dude.”

Keith didn’t understand how a single word could make him feel so utterly exposed. He drew his hands into fists. “Well, it doesn’t matter.”

“O-kay,” said Hunk, putting the lid on the box.

“We’re defenders of the universe, we have no time for-”

“Keith, we just spent an entire evening playing a board game we made up,” Pidge cut him off. “The other day, Hunk literally spent six hours in the kitchen trying to make pancakes out of food goo and ingredients he got from Mackoshia.”

“It _almost_ worked,” said Hunk, shaking his head. “I just needed a bit more Yalgatic salt and-”

“So what we’re saying,” Pidge said, “is we think you’ll find a spare moment to kiss Lance when we’re not fighting Zarkon.”

Keith swallowed down the heat he could feel building on his cheeks. “I don’t want to-”

Hunk laughed. “You want to.” He looked up, eyes alight. “Hey, I can cook a meal for your first date! Oh, this will be great, I know all of Lance’s favorite foods, and I think I’m starting to learn yours now that we eat more than food goo. You prefer sweetened-”

“No,” said Keith. He stood up. His heart was a lead weight in his chest. “Stop. It’s not going to happen.”

“Keith,” Hunk said, his voice suddenly gentle. Both he and Pidge were looking at him with a softness in their eyes that Keith did not like at all.

“I’m going to bed,” he said, and turned away from them.

“We just want you guys to be happy!” he heard Pidge say after him as he walked through the doors.

Keith dug his fingertips into the palms of his gloves the whole way back to his room, heart thumping oddly in his chest.

 

*

 

“And _then,_ okay, my brother and I switched out all the ingredient labels in my mom’s spice cabinet.” Lance held up the cleaning rag forgotten in his hand as he spoke, gesticulating grandly. “We thought it was brilliant. It still is, in my opinion.” Then he sighed a long, sad, dramatic sigh. “But we were sabotaged.”

Keith didn’t look up from the healing pod he was scrubbing. It was just the two of them alone in the enormous room, space moving slowly outside the windows. “How?”

Lance leaned against his pod, crossing his ankles over each other. “My dad decided to do something special for my mom that day. Like, it wasn’t even a prank, even though he never cooks. My mom would have caught it in a second, she can tell the difference between salt and sugar just by looking at it, I swear, but my dad can’t tell salt from pepper.” There was a smile on Lance’s face when Keith flicked his eyes over to him, staring unseeingly out at the stars.

“Anyway, apparently, he saw this recipe for cinnamon buns somewhere, from scratch, which is a lot of work for someone who _does_ know how to cook, you know? But my mom loves them.”

Keith nodded, trying to rub a tiny blot of what might have been blood from the side of the pod. He’d never been much into cooking, surviving off of simple sandwiches and more processed sugar than he should have when he lived alone in his shack on Earth, but cinnamon buns might have been worth it. Even now as he recalled the unbearably sweet flavor, warm and gooey on his tongue and fingertips, his mouth watered slightly.

“To cut to the chase, my dad made the world’s first paprika buns,” Lance said, breaking Keith’s daydream. “I mean, it looks just like cinnamon, right? And I _assume_ no one’s ever made them before. I don’t know why anyone would want to, they were terrible.”

Keith felt his lips twitch. “You tried it even though you knew all the ingredients were messed up?”

“Dude, I had to,” said Lance, eyes widening. “They came out looking pretty okay, and my dad was so proud of them.”

“You could have just told him you’d messed with the ingredients,” Keith said.

“Keith, remember when Hunk spent six hours trying to make those pancakes out of food goo? Would you have had the heart to deny him?”

“But Hunk’s pancakes were good.”

Lance sucked in a breath. “You,” he said releasing it, “have a thing or two to learn about love.”

“So teach me.”

Keith hadn’t meant to say it, hadn’t even known he was going to until after it had already slipped out, some sort of Lance-induced automated response. He froze for a quarter of a tick, hand curling tightly around the rag in his hand, still crouched in the pod.

He began to scrub again as Lance was silent for an extra, deafening heartbeat.

“Well alright,” he finally said.

Slowly, Keith looked up.

Lance was already looking back at him.

“Step one,” he said, holding up a finger, eyes not leaving Keith, “to not having a heart of stone: Eat the paprika bun.”

Keith raised an eyebrow.

“I had to eat the whole thing, Keith.”

Keith raised the other eyebrow.

“The whole. Thing.”

Keith slowly shook his head. “You did not have to eat the whole thing.”

“I _did._ ”

Suddenly, Keith felt a smile tugging at the corners of his mouth. “You did not have to,” he said again.

“Do you know what torture tastes like, Keith? Because I do.”

Keith bit down on the tip of his tongue. 

“It’s a salty, vinegary piece of limp dough.”

Keith bit his tongue harder, then said, “Vinegar?”

“We replaced the vanilla extract with vinegar,” Lance said solemnly, as if it was the deepest regret of his life. “Salty vinegar dough.” He sighed sadly. “With a dusting of paprika.”

Keith met his eyes. 

They both burst out into laughter. It echoed off the walls, the high ceiling, the windows, filling Keith’s ears and his chest and the very air around them. His and Lance’s laugh, mixing together in the air, a loud, raucous, happy sound. 

Keith regained his breath, calming. It was a mistake to glance at Lance’s eyes a second time- they burst out into laughter all over again.

“That is the dumbest April Fool’s joke I’ve ever heard,” Keith said, wiping his eyes.

“It was brilliant,” said Lance, face stuck in a wide grin, wiping his own face, flushed and bright-eyed. “I just wasn’t supposed to be the victim.”

Keith let out another laugh. “What happened when he found out?”

Lance’s smile changed, softened. “He never did,” he said. “When my mom saw them, she ate two.”

The words hung between them for a moment.

Keith’s smile slowly faded. “Oh,” he said.

Suddenly, looking at Lance, hearing this story about his family, about his parents, hearing this happy childhood memory, something in Keith’s chest began to ache.

“Yeah,” said Lance. He was moving back to his own abandoned, half-cleaned healing pod. “Anyway, that’s why I’m not going to fool around with the kitchen next week.”

“What _are_ you going to do?” Keith asked. He hadn’t even realized it was nearly April. It was easy to lose track of the Earth year in space.

Lance’s lips twisted into a smirk as he looked at him around the entrance of his pod. “Wouldn’t you like to know.”

Keith let out a breath that might have been another laugh. Before Lance ducked back into his pod, Keith swore he saw a smile on his lips.

 

*

 

Keith was pretty sure his heart was going to explode out of his chest and if he didn’t do something about it, things were going to get bloodier than they already were.

Shiro put a hand on his shoulder and said, voice gentle, “He’s going to be fine. Go change up.” 

Keith looked up. He hadn’t realized he’d been staring down at his hands. They were stained redder than his suit.

It had been an attack on a planet called Lumior. They had been contacted to help take out a rebel group that was said to have connections to Zarkon. From the glimpse Keith had gotten in the full five minutes he’d been on the ground before the attack came, Lumior looked like Mackoshia’s glossier and sleeker cousin. The air was warm but fresh, flowers and bushes and leaves curling up from the ground. Everything was made of bright, glittering glass, and the sky was a pale pink with one bright sun overhead.

They had come out of the Castle to meet the leader of the Lumites, Queen Noxana, and a band of her people, but before a word could be exchanged a knife had flown into the air.

It was meant for Shiro, but Lance had been quicker.

If it had been any other situation, Keith might have admired the artfulness of it, the way the blade easily split through the armor of Lance’s suit, slicing right into his left arm. Senselessly, it reminded Keith of the knife the sales man at the Unilu mall had been demonstrating with rocks and bloto fruit.

For a quarter of a tick, Keith’s mind went white.

When it flooded with color again, he was standing in front of the Lumite Queen with his bayard drawn.

She had taken out a sword, wielding it deftly between her fingers. Her blue hair was piled tall on top of her head, a head crown dangling with glittering stars over her crescent shaped ears.

She was skillful with her sword, but Keith was angrier. Pidge and Hunk flew into action as her subjects drew out their own weapons.

As Keith fought to disarm her, the tip of his sword sliced the side of her arm. “That’s for Lance,” he hissed through his teeth. When her sword finally clattered to the ground – “And _that’s_ for Shiro.” 

It was Allura who rounded up the band of Lumites with an Altean elasticity rope (procured from her hair) and the help of the cable from Pidge’s bayard.

“Lance?” said Hunk, eyes wide, swiveling around with his bayard still smoking in his hands.

Keith turned around. Shiro held Lance propped up gently, blood leaking out of the crack in his armor. Lance gave Hunk a weak smile. “I’m fine, buddy.” His face was pale; he wasn’t even wearing his helmet. None of them had been.

And then Keith was next to him, eyes darting between Lance and Shiro. “I – are – Shiro?”

“I’m fine, Keith,” Shiro said, steady as always. “Help me get Lance inside to one of the healing pods.”

Keith nodded as Shiro carefully helped Lance maneuver himself into a standing position. “I’m fine too, Keith, thanks for asking,” Lance mumbled as he lurched to his feet. He staggered, flinging his injured arm out to catch his balance on Keith. Lance let out a stifled cry of pain and Keith let his arm slide through his fingers, horrified.

Fingertips so red.

Lance had been in the healing pod – the ones they’d only just been cleaning, laughter bouncing off the very glass he was encased in – for a little while now. Keith had changed out of his bloody suit, they all had, and everyone was gathered in the center of the room where Allura was explaining the uncovered plot.

“That wasn’t the leader of the Lumites,” she said. “Coran got in contact with the _actual_ leader of Lumior. The information of our arrival was intercepted by the underground rebel group.”

“And that was them,” said Pidge bitterly.

“Yes,” said Allura. “But we do have them captured, so that’s the good news.”

“The bad news: Lance,” said Hunk, glancing over at his healing pod.

“He should be out in no time, good as new,” Coran said, bouncing on his heels. “A light stab wound is nothing the Castle can’t fix.”

“ _Light_ stab wound,” Pidge repeated.

But Keith replayed it over in his mind, the way the knife had sliced into Lance’s arm like butter. He knew knife fighting, and he knew sword fighting, and he saw how that knife was headed for Shiro’s heart, and he knew what would have happened if Lance had angled his body differently. Even an arm wound could be fatal.

It wasn’t like Keith had never seen blood before. It wasn’t like he’d never seen Lance’s blood, or any of his teammates’ blood. It wasn’t like they all hadn’t each suffered near-fatal injuries before.

The thing was, it never got any easier.

The thing _was,_ Keith had been slowly coming to realize, the more he grew into this family of his, the _harder_ it had become to see them hurt.  

All he could think about was Lance’s laughter at his own April Fool’s story, the team they made for that dumb board game, the team they made during missions. The way Lance _winked_ at him, the way he held up the scarf in the Mackoshian market, told Keith it matched his eyes, smiled at him. Lance, sweet and happy and wrapped in color, always flickering a glance in Keith’s direction.

Keith curled his fingers into fists, knuckles white against the warn leather of his gloves.

 _We’re defenders of the universe,_ he had told Pidge. They had no time for frivolity. Even if this _thing_ with Lance was actually a _thing_ , what would it accomplish?

“I’ve heard that if you frown for too long, your face will get stuck like that.”

Keith looked up. He hadn’t realized everyone had cleared out. Shiro stood beside him, a gentle look on his face as he gazed at Keith. Keith had been staring, unseeingly, at Lance’s healing pod.

As if Lance wasn’t unconscious and encased in glass, Keith could almost hear his response to Shiro. _“Keith came out of the womb with his face stuck like that.”_

“I’m not-” Keith started. He broke off. “I’m fine. What’s the new plan?”

Shiro looked at him for a half second longer. “We’re meeting with the actual Lumite Queen Noxana tomorrow,” he said, “and we’re going to deliver her the rebel hostages.”

“And they’ll be punished,” Keith said, eyes sliding back to the wound that had already half disappeared on Lance’s arm.

“She’ll decide what to do with them, yes,” said Shiro. He paused. His voice lowered slightly. “He’s going to be fine, Keith.” Keith’s eyes slid back to Shiro. “You know, you could tell him-”

Keith turned away, the sound of his boots echoing off the walls.

“Keith.”

“Stop, Shiro.”

Keith’s heart was pounding in his chest, a terrible frenzy of embarrassment building up in his throat. Did everyone know?

“I’m just saying,” Shiro said gently. “It might make stuff like this easier.”

Keith couldn’t help the tiny laugh that came from his mouth, devoid of any humor. “Wouldn’t it just make things _harder?”_ He didn’t see how admitting anything to Lance would make the bone-deep ache of worry that came with stuff like this _less_ hard.

“Maybe easy was the wrong choice of word,” said Shiro after another pause. “What I meant is, you wouldn’t have to weather it alone.”

Keith was quiet. He remembered what it felt like to lose Shiro, one of the few people who meant something to him, who was as good as a brother. He _had_ weathered it alone then. But he’d always had the hope that he’d get Shiro back.

“What if he hated me for it, or what if he didn’t and he started throwing himself in the way of knives for _me-”_ Keith broke off.

Shiro put a hand on Keith’s shoulder. It was bracing. When Keith looked up, Shiro was smiling slightly. “You know Lance has been willing to do that since day one.”

Keith thought of how Lance had sacrificed himself for Coran when he’d barely known him, back when the Galra had infiltrated the Castle on the planet of the Arusians. How Lance hadn’t even hesitated before jumping in front of a knife for Shiro today.

Shiro squeezed his shoulder once before he let it go. “Don’t think on it too hard.”

 

*

 

Keith’s mind was a mess of thoughts as night began to bleed through the Castle windows, sky turning from pink to red. He leapt from thought to thought in an unsteady rhythm only rivaled by the beat of his heart.

“It would appear,” Coran said, checking the diagnostics on Lance’s pod when he failed to emerge as originally predicted, “that the knife that pierced him was poisoned.”

Keith’s brain stuttered. 

“What does that mean? Will he be okay?” said Hunk, voicing what Keith couldn’t find his tongue to say.

“Oh, he’ll be fine,” said Coran, pressing a few buttons and turning back to them with a twiddle of his mustache. “Just a few more hours in the pod than expected. It’s a good thing we got him in there as quickly as we did.”

“That _is_ a relief,” said Allura. She looked at the Paladins. “We do have important negotiations tomorrow, and since Lance won’t be emerging any time soon, it would be best if you got some rest.”

Keith stood silent, arms crossed, leaning against the wall. It would be useless to try to sleep now. He could never rest well when one of them was in a pod.

None of the other Paladins ended up leaving for bed, either, but Hunk did fall into a doze against another one of the pods, and Keith could see Pidge growing bleary-eyed over the bright screen of her computer. Keith itched to go to the training deck to pass the time, but he would be too tired for the negotiations the next day if he wore his body out more than it already was.

Finally, when Keith was just beginning to wonder if they might have to stay up all night, the pod slowly began to open. Keith pushed himself up from the wall as Hunk jerked awake.

Lance tottered out, eyes shaded and unfocused, face slightly pale, and immediately found balance against Shiro’s waiting shoulder.

“Thanks for the save out there, Lance,” Shiro said. “I might not be standing here right now if it weren’t for you.”

“Is that a Voltron joke?” Lance said, in an obvious daze, leaning heavily against Shiro. “Because you’re the head and I’m a leg?”

Keith wanted to groan and laugh at the same time. 

Hunk went over and hugged him. “Glad you’re okay, buddy. I’d hate to be the only leg of Voltron. We’d probably need crutches.”

“And who’d fly the crutch?” Lance said, closing his eyes just briefly against Hunk’s shoulder.

“If you’re in zero gravity space, you technically wouldn’t need one,” said Pidge, nudging Hunk out of the way so she could get to Lance.

“It’s not like anything happened to the blue lion,” Keith said before he could help himself.

“Wow, thanks, Keith,” said Lance, letting go of Hunk and meeting Keith’s eyes for the first time since he came out of the pod. “I’m hardly dead five minutes and you’re already putting up help wanted signs? I see how it is.”

“You’re not dead,” Keith said. There was something stupidly relieving about getting to say those words, looking at Lance as Lance looked back at him, even if he did feel the downturn tug of his own mouth as he said them.

Lance rolled his eyes. “Glad to see you’re okay too, Keith.” He pushed himself up from Hunk and Pidge and stretched.

“Come on buddy, you need rest,” said Hunk.

“Yeah,” Lance said. He yawned. “I should get some shut-eye if I want to be in tip-top shape in case more heroic deeds are needed of me tomorrow.”

He flashed them all a toothy smile before Hunk and Pidge lead him toward the exit. The doors shut behind them.

“Hey.”

Keith looked up from the doors and found Shiro in front of him. Again, with another smile on his face. “Next time one of your teammates comes out of a healing pod, try not to sound so annoyed that they’re alive.”

Keith’s defenses immediately rose. “I wasn’t-”

“I know,” said Shiro, and Keith found he only half-hated that he knew. “Now get some sleep, okay?”

“Yes, sir,” said Keith. As soon as Shiro turned away, he ran a hand over his face.

 _Why do I have to be so terrible at this?_ he thought, frustrated, as he walked back to his room through the dimly lit Castle.

 

*

 

Keith didn’t sleep well.

To be fair, he rarely slept _well—_ he just slept. Sleeping well was a privilege only those completely capable of relaxing were able to enjoy.

That night was no exception, not when his mind was full of Shiro’s words, knives slicing through armor, blood on his fingertips, and an infuriatingly blue-eyed smile that Keith found himself so often the victim of these days.

Keith slid out of his room when a glance at the clock told him it was finally an acceptable hour to get out of bed, fatigue itching behind his eyes. No one was usually awake this early, and Keith liked the time alone, feeling as if he had the whole, giant Castle all to himself.

A nice thing about actually staying on a planet was the light. That was something he missed from Earth— waking up to a sunrise. As Keith’s feet took him down the hallway, hints of early morning daylight managed to sneak in, slipping beneath doorways and slanting around corners.

It helped to settle him, slightly.

He made his way to the rec room and sat down on the very couch where he and Lance had beat Pidge and Hunk at that ridiculous board game. The room was filled with a delicate shade of orange, and Keith wondered what sun it was, what star, what kind of atmosphere on what kind of planet it was that twisted light into something as beautiful as this.

With the warmth on his face, he dozed.

When he woke up, it was to footsteps, and then to the clang of something on the table beside him.

Keith opened his eyes, immediately awake, only this time instead of fatigue it was a grogginess that lingered around his eyes. He blinked a few times as he sat up, trying to clear his brain, but it only grew more disoriented when he realized what was on the table in front of him, and then _who_ exactly put it there.

Lance beamed at him from the opposite couch. The sun was higher outside the window, brighter, illuminating his face in yellow. Keith squinted.

“What,” he said, voice rough. His mouth felt fuzzy.

“Good morning to you too, sunshine,” said Lance, still grinning, all teeth and crinkled eyes, and it was too early for this, because Keith could feel his heart doing funny things in this weakened state, twisting and bleeding the same sunrise colors into his veins.

“I thought you might like some coffee,” Lance said, nodding down at the cup in front of him. Keith glanced down at the steaming brown liquid.

He didn’t understand. Lance had never brought him anything like this before. Why was Lance even awake? He’d been exhausted after coming out of the pod last night.

“Why?”

Lance rolled his eyes and counted off on his fingers. “Uh, one, because it’s morning. Two, because I’m the most considerate Paladin on this ship, and three, you look like you’re half dead. I put extra sugar in it the way you like it.”

“Um, okay,” Keith said. Something in his chest pinged with delight at the knowledge that Lance knew he liked his coffee so sweet. “Thanks.”

He didn’t understand the way Lance was looking at him, the eagerness on his face as Keith took the cup in his hands. It wasn’t real coffee, of course, but a pretty good substitute Hunk made from a tubular plant he’d found on another distant planet. Hunk had managed to regrow it, and they drank it all the time.

Keith felt slightly uncomfortable under Lance’s persistent gaze, heart beginning to thump more quickly in his chest.

Was Lance...trying to be _sweet?_

His hands felt clammy around the cup.

He hadn’t realized it right away, that Lance had slowly stopped flirting with the people and aliens around him and had started flirting with _him_ instead. Keith hadn’t believed it, the way Lance smiled at _him,_ actually winked at _him,_ nudged him and crowded him and goaded him in ways that awakened a herd of butterflies in his chest that weren’t supposed to be there, because, in Lance’s own words, he was the “too cool for school badass Red Paladin,” a ridiculously dumb title which had Keith grinning himself to sleep that night. 

Keith could feel his breath growing shallow. 

“ _You could tell him,”_ Shiro had said. _“It might make things easier.”_

He might not be able to stand it if he didn’t.

He averted his eyes from Lance’s gaze and brought the cup to his lips and downed half of it before his tongue could betray him.

He nearly choked.

It was like swallowing warm, rancid gasoline, and it burned all the way down his throat. He’d been expecting sweet – Lance had said he’d put in extra sugar – but he didn’t know _what_ Lance had done to it.

When he looked back up at Lance, his face was even _more_ eager, bright blue eyes set on Keith expectantly.

Keith willed his eyes not to water. The aftertaste was unbearable on his tongue, like burning sulfur.

“Something wrong?” Lance asked.

“It’s just hot,” Keith said, voice tight. His throat twitched.

Lance raised his eyebrows. “Are you sure?”

Lance frowned, just slightly, the downturn of his lips striking Keith as so very kissable even in his haze. He wanted to kiss the frown from his lips. It would be so much sweeter than whatever fetid mess was in this cup.

“ _You could tell him,”_ Shiro said in his brain again.

If he told him, he could kiss him. The need struck him with such ferocity it nearly knocked the breath out of him.

He couldn’t tell Lance the coffee he’d made for him was bad.

So he downed the rest.

“ _Quiznak,”_ he gasped, slamming the cup back down on the table.

And then he looked up at Lance, Lance who smiled at him and winked at him and made him laugh and made him terrible coffee, who he wanted to catch coming out of a healing pod the next time he did something stupidly heroic. Lance, who he wanted to kiss, and Lance, who annoyed the hell out of him but who he’d liked for so, _so_ long now.

He didn’t think twice before he said it, the taste of the terrible coffee still burning on his tongue, but the need in his heart greater. “Lance, I really like you.”

Lance’s mouth dropped open.

A long, silent moment passed.

Very, very slowly, it stretched. And very, very slowly, something began to burn at the core of Keith’s body and make its way outward.

Time itself had slowed, and it wasn’t because of whatever was in that cup Lance had given him.

 _I really like you._ He’d said it out loud.

Lance’s eyes were as wide as teledov lenses.

The heat was stifling, crawling up his neck, numbing his cheeks and scorching the tip of his ears, so hot he began to feel the prickle of sweat along his forehead.

Keith needed to say something, anything, but he didn’t know how to open his mouth, didn’t know how to breathe in air and turn it into voice. 

Then- Lance smiled. A real, genuine, eye crinkling smile, and Keith almost choked on relief. 

And then, looking Keith right in the eye, Lance _laughed._

Keith froze. His heart went askew.

It wasn’t the right kind of laugh. It wasn’t the right kind of happiness. Keith knew this laugh intimately from Lance- it was the _mocking_ kind of laugh.

A numbness began to engulf Keith’s flesh.

This had to be a dream, or some kind of alternate reality.

But Keith’s words still rang in his ears – _I really like you, I really like you, I really like you –_ as they blended with Lance’s laugh before they were drowned by it, waves of humiliation swallowing them whole, not a single chance for one last breath.

Lance wiped a hand over his eyes, looking at the ceiling. “Wow,” he said, taking a breath. “You really got me, Keith.”

Keith’s brain felt somewhere in the next room. “What do you-”

“LANCE!”

Keith jumped as Hunk burst into the room. His eyes fell on Keith, and then the cup between them. His shoulders deflated. “Aw, Lance, did you really? That’s awful.”

Lance jumped up, turning his back to Keith. “I had to, Hunk.”

“Really? I was really hoping you’d forget after yesterday’s near-death situation.” Hunk pointed at Lance. “Also, are you even aware of what that stuff is? I use it in my cooking _sparingly_ , and I don’t think it was made for human consumption. What if it burns out his stomach?” He peered around Lance and met Keith’s eyes, worried.

Keith blinked, dethatched from his body, his mind trying to catch up but unable to grasp the threads of all that had elapsed in the past five minutes. “What?” 

“Did he tell you it was coffee?” Hunk said. He walked over and peered into the cup. “Woah, dude, did you drink _all_ of it? I’m impressed and also horrified.”

“Wait,” Keith said, a new, colder kind of humiliation creeping up on him. _Wait-_

“April Fools!”

The words rang stale on the walls as no one reacted. Lance’s eyes met Keith’s for a quarter of a second and then bounced away.

Keith’s heart froze over.

Of course. _Of course._

It was never anything other than a prank.

“I guess you never do back down from a challenge,” Hunk said to Keith, looking begrudgingly impressed.

Except he didn’t know it was a challenge.

He looked at Lance, who wasn’t looking anywhere near him. He had thought Lance was being _genuine._

“But-” Keith started, trying to regain some semblance of control, “you said you’d never mess with ingredients for an April Fool’s joke again.” 

“Uh, yeah, to throw you off the scent,” Lance said, the _duh_ implied. A new slice of hurt opened in Keith’s chest. 

A joke. All of it.

“The cinnamon bun story?” said Hunk. “He did the same thing to me last year, except he gave me onions dipped in caramel. I thought they were caramel apples.” He shot a narrow-eyed glance at Lance. “Cruel, cruel joke. I’ll never trust a caramel apple again.”

Keith’s heart sank further into the waves, the surface freezing over with icy humiliation.

That time cleaning the healing pods, when Keith had actually felt _special_ getting to hear a story about Lance’s family, his past. It was all a joke to Lance. 

“You sure you feel okay, dude?” Hunk said, squinting his eyes at Keith. “That was Shelvian boiling oil, like an alien pesticide I use to clean the fruits and vegetables. It should be harmless, but it’s not to be drunk by the glass. You look pale.”

“I’m fine,” Keith said automatically. He stood up, legs numb and dethatched. He didn’t want to be here, he didn’t want to be near Lance. He needed to be anywhere else.

 “Whatever, good one,” he forced himself to say. “Happy April Fool’s Day.” He made himself roll his eyes. “I’ll see you guys when it’s time to meet the Lumites.”

He was halfway down the hallway before the doors closed behind him, and when he was finally around the corner, he let himself punch the wall in lieu of punching Lance, in lieu of punching his _own_ face _,_ for being such an idiot.  

Lance would never flirt with _him._ What had he been thinking?

It was a joke. It had only ever been a joke. He should have known. Lance was always thorough with his pranks.

“Too impulsive,” he muttered savagely between his teeth, punching the wall again. _Stupid, impulsive Red Paladin._

It was an idiotic, foolish, _soft_ hope.

He would never change.

 

*

 

“Thank you, Princess, for helping us capture the rebels,” Queen Noxana – the _actual_ Queen Noxana – said, grasping Allura’s hand. She looked strikingly like the rebel queen, silky blue hair atop her head, a crown of stars dangling golden around her head, ears shaped like crescent moons. Her skin was the softest shade of yellow, like a sun just cresting over the horizon. Even the features of their faces looked alike, from what Keith had seen while they fought.

They had delivered to her the group of rebels that Allura and Coran had safely kept in the Castle overnight. They had been taken by Noxana’s guards before the meeting. 

Keith stood to the side, arms crossed. They stood in a large glass hall because, like all the Lumite buildings, the entire structure was made of glass. The late morning sun in the pearly pink sky streamed in from every angle, and it might have created the illusion that they were outside if it were not for the faintest shimmer of the glass that made Keith feel slightly as if he were inside a dream.

It would be pleasant if it didn’t feel faintly disconcerting, like he couldn’t quite focus on the proceedings of the meeting. Of course, that might have been because Keith was already unfocused, everything from earlier that morning gone from numbness to fire in his veins, played over and over and over in his mind. He longed to go to the training deck, to fight so hard he couldn’t think. His hand itched to slice his bayard through something.

Lance’s laugh echoed from the other side of the enormous hall, and when Keith’s eyes found him, his chest filled with a terrible, certain dread. 

Lance was leaning forward, that _smirk_ on his face, toward a young, handsome Lumite with a head of silky blue curls and a silver necklace glittering around his throat.

He didn’t look particularly impressed, but Keith didn’t care about that.

Keith shifted his eyes away again, unseeing, to a glass building across the street, where Lumites came and went with their different business for the day. The fire in Keith’s veins had gone cold, washing over him like a physical pain.

Now that he’d succeeded in pranking Keith, was it time to move on? Keith didn’t know. He didn’t care. He couldn’t stand it.

All this time, he thought Lance had been making advances on him. For once in Keith’s life, he thought it’d actually been on _him._ But apparently not, if Lance had moved on to new people. Hunk and Pidge had thought it was real. Even _Shiro_ had been convinced a confession would go well.

The thought bathed his insides in a new, icy coat of humiliation. Not only did everyone know about his feelings, but now they would know how embarrassingly unreciprocated they were.

At least he hadn’t started liking Lance because he’d started flirting with him. Those feelings, at least, were the product of the mocking, _rival_ version of Lance. Who had still been smart, and brave, and good. A weak consolation.

Only now that Keith knew him as a friend and not just as a rival, it was far, far worse.

Was it all a game? Had Lance gotten bored of his other marks? Lance liked to flirt, and Keith was an interesting, easy target.

Keith’s fingers curled tightly into fists. The ice began to melt with fire again as anger overtook it, the ache expanding in his chest down to his toes. Never, in Keith’s life, would he be an _easy target._

 _And yet,_ a voice in the back of his head said, _you’ve been hit._

“Uh, Keith? Hey?”

Keith looked around, blindly, at Hunk, who was approaching him as if he were a feral animal.

“No offense, but you look a little…off. Just wanted to make sure you still feel okay after that boiling oil?” Hunk asked, drawing closer. The sunlight glinted brightly off of the yellow of his armor.

“I’m fine,” Keith said shortly.

“You sure? You look like you want to punch something, dude,” Hunk said. He frowned. “But that could just be your normal face?”

Keith looked at him. Surely Lance had told him what Keith had said that morning. And surely Hunk, because he _knew,_ because everyone on Voltron except the person he’d directly told, _knew_ , would realize why it was making Keith look like he wanted to punch something.

But all Keith saw in Hunk’s eyes was concern and confusion.

“I’m fine,” he said again. Absently, his eyes fell on Queen Noxana, in conversation with Coran. He grasped for a completely new topic of conversation. “Do you think it’s weird how similar she looks to the rebel queen?”

Hunk glanced around, eyes following Keith’s gaze to Queen Noxana. He shrugged. “I dunno, I didn’t really get a chance to look at the rebel queen before she, you know, attacked us.”

“Hm,” Keith said. He looked back at Hunk. “Do you think we can go back to the Castle now?”

“I think one of them said they’re arranging a tour of the palace for us,” Hunk said. Keith looked at him. “And I’m pretty sure Allura would say we’re all required to go.”

“Great,” Keith muttered. More time in Lance’s presence, and in the presence of the alien who looked just like the one who’d stabbed him. Perfect.

 

*

 

“Hey, Pidge-”

Pidge held up a hand, eyes fixed straight ahead as she walked, giant leaves curling over the space above her head. “No.”

Lance frowned, pushing the enormous leaf out of his way. “You don’t even know what I was going to say.”

“But I do know it was going to end with ‘April Fool’s’,” Pidge said. She slanted her eyes at him above her glasses. The pink sky outside reflected off of the lenses.

Lance pouted. “What if I was dying, Pidge, like, literally dying of thirst, and all I was trying to ask was for some water? Huh? I’d have died because you refuse to hear me out.”

“Dude, I say this because you’re my best friend and I know you, but you’d have started complaining _way_ before you reached the brink of death,” said Hunk, ducking beneath a long, white petal.

“And you could just drink from the irrigation tubes,” said Pidge, pointing up at the thin, glass pipes that twisted and looped overhead, feeding the plants.

Lance crossed his arms, pouting more deeply. “You guys are really lame best friends.” 

“Now _that’s_ a good April Fool’s joke,” said Pidge. Hunk high fived her.

The Lumite sun glistened from the pink sky and through the glass, imbuing the light with a rosy hue. The afternoon drew on and the light glinted off enormous, sweet smelling flowers and giant green leaves hanging overhead. The Paladins had been taken on a tour of the Lumite royal garden, which was a bit like being inside an enormous greenhouse full of enormous plants. Keith wasn’t entirely sure that some of these flowers were incapable of devouring a person. The air was heavy and warm. 

Keith felt a new spike of embarrassment at Pidge’s words. He lagged behind the others, but he could hear every word of their conversation. Did _everyone_ know it was April Fool’s day except him?

Like Lance could hear his thoughts, Keith heard him mutter, boots squeaking on the glass floor ahead, “I didn’t realize you two were so good at keeping up with the date.” Then he said, as Keith pushed through the leaves and caught sight of them, “At least not _all_ of you-”

Lance broke off mid-sentence, looking back at him, the cheeky smirk falling from his face as Keith caught his eye. Like he’d forgotten that he’d been avoiding Keith since Keith had uttered that _sentence_ that morning.

It hadn’t escaped Keith the way he’d taken care to stay on the opposite side of the room during the meeting that morning. All throughout the tour he had kept up with each of the others, not so much as sending a glance Keith’s way.

Keith didn’t understand. If Lance had interpreted what he’d said as a joke, then why was Lance acting like this?

Lance’s eyes dropped to the floor, the reflection of green leaves and pink sky and sunrays bouncing off of every surface. It gave his cheeks a flushing, pink glow. Keith’s chest constricted painfully at the sight.

Pidge noticed the exchange. She looked back at Keith. “Sorry, Keith, I meant to warn you.” There was a touch of sympathy in her voice.

“He drank a whole cup of that boiling oil I got from Shelvun,” said Hunk, because sure, Keith thought, let’s go into it _again._  Hunk looked at him. “Hey, on the bright side, your internal organs are probably like, way disinfected by now. Great for digestion.”

“Wonderful,” Keith muttered, shifting his eyes away.

“Ah, there you all are.”

Allura, Shiro, Coran and the Lumite delegates stood up ahead, half shadowed by plants. Shiro smiled when Keith met his eyes.

 “Enjoying our greenery, I presume,” said their tour leader, a tall, thin delegate named Solire.

“Why yes, I do enjoy _green_ ery,” said Lance, nudging Pidge in the shoulder. She smirked and nudged him back in the side.

“I’m glad you have enjoyed the tour,” said Solire. “Now, we would like to invite you for a meal to express our greatest thanks for your protection.”

“A meal? We should protect you guys more often,” said Hunk, rubbing his hands together.

Keith felt his heart sink. All he wanted to do was go back to the Castle, where he could be alone, fighting on the training deck, away from people and away from _Lance_ and his dumb jokes and pranks. He’d rather eat food goo.

Solire turned to lead them out of the room.

“My lady,” Keith heard Lance say, and when he looked, against his better judgement, he found Lance bowing, extending his hand to a glossy, young Lumite woman whose blue hair was tied back with a shimmering bronze chord.

Unlike the young man earlier, the woman actually laughed, a tinkling, high pitched sound that felt like a very sharp, very long knife to Keith’s chest.

He looked away, curling his hands into fists as the piercing, terrible sting of it spread slowly through his body. He wished, more than anything now, that he didn’t have to attend this meal, that he didn’t have to be here, that he didn’t have to be near Lance _,_ that he’d never fallen for Lance in the first place, that he hadn’t let his tongue slip that morning, that he’d never let himself be swept up in Lance’s flighty advances.

Because now he was advancing toward other people, and Keith’s blood felt so thick with disappointment that he didn’t know what to do.

Shiro fell into step with him as everyone slowly made their way out of the room. “You doing alright? You’ve been quiet today.”

“I’m fine,” Keith said.

Shiro’s eyes darted to Lance, who was now arm in arm with the girl. “Did something hap-”

“No.”

Shiro looked at him, but something Keith always appreciated immensely about Shiro was that he knew when to push, and he knew when to back off.

They were led up a glass staircase and into another magnificent, glassy room. Below them, people meandered around in what looked to be a royal lounge. A little further on, right in the open, there was a bathroom. Keith averted his eyes.

“It’s interesting,” Keith said to Shiro. “The lack of privacy.”

Shiro smiled slightly. “Not a place you’d like to live, huh?”

Keith let out a breath of a laugh. “No, not really.”

They were lead to a long, sleek table, shimmering like gold, set with glass plates and cutlery. A rather plump Lumite pulled out two chairs for Keith and Shiro, and then took the one between them. Lance, Keith noted with a mixture of relief and more disappointment, sat down at the opposite end of the table beside his new female friend.

Solire stood up from his chair at the center of the table. “We thank you, our friends, the Paladins of Voltron, for your service to us. May this meal be a gesture of our everlasting friendship and loyalty to you in the face of evil forces.”

“I love meals of everlasting friendship and loyalty,” Hunk whispered to Pidge across the table.

Wait staff, wearing long robes of a gentle light green, began to bring out the food.

“I am _starved,”_ Lance’s voice carried down from his end of the table, “but I was raised to be a gentleman, so ladies first.” The girl’s laugh traveled around the table, and Keith squeezed his fingers tightly around his seven-pronged fork, keeping his eyes trained on his plate, stomach curling unpleasantly.

Keith, at least, only ever laughed when Lance said something that was actually _funny._

Because Lance was funny, he was very funny, and right now, Keith hated that he was funny. He hated how when Lance made him laugh he would look smug sometimes, but more of the time he looked pleased, and most of the time he laughed along.

Another laugh rang out as Lance said something in a lower voice that Keith couldn’t make out.

There was a knife, and it was inside Keith’s chest, and it was twisting.  

He didn’t want to know if what Lance had said was actually funny or not.

One of the wait staff stepped into the space between Shiro and the plump Lumite, a giant platter of something leafy and tuberous, not unlike a plant Keith had seen in the royal gardens, balanced on one arm. It didn’t look particularly appetizing, even if Keith had had any appetite.

Another laugh from down the table. Keith’s knuckles were white around his fork, the jagged edge in his chest splitting, on fire. Keith kept his gaze trained on the utensil in the waiter’s hand as he placed the tuber from his platter on the Lumite’s plate, and then onto Shiro’s, eyes unseeing.

— until there was suddenly something to see.

It happened so quickly–  in one breath, Keith was sitting, sure that if he ate anything, it would feel like swallowing a mouthful of nails, and in the next, he was out of his chair with one hand wrapped around the waiter’s fist, the other holding his seven-pronged fork to his throat.

“Oh!” said the plump Lumite.

The room went numbingly silent.

Solire stood up so quickly he knocked his chair back, eyes wide as they stared at the dagger in the waiter’s hand. And then at Shiro, who it had been ready to stab. Then they flickered up to Keith’s face.

“Not exactly a butter knife,” Keith said, grunting as he wrangled the dagger from the waiter’s hand, who, though frozen within Keith’s hold, kept an iron grip on it.

“I- I- ” Solire said, eyes still wide, and lifted a hand to point at the waiter. “He is a rebel! We have been infiltrated again! Call the guards!”

Keith kept the waiter firmly in his gasp, eyes darting around the table. There was a member of the wait staff behind every member of Voltron.

“Watch your backs!” he managed to say before the room erupted into a flurry of movement.

Pidge and Hunk jumped out of their chairs, bayards drawn, as Shiro shot up and took out the waiter standing behind Allura. Lance’s waiter grabbed him from behind, knife to his throat, and Keith nearly let go of the rebel in his arms.

But Lance grabbed his own fork and stabbed the rebel waiter’s hand, hard, and he let go with a muffled cry as the knife clattered to the glass floor before he fled through the door after the rest.

The rest of the wait staff —the rebels— hooded in their green robes, were making their way down the glass staircase into the lounge below.

“Paladins, come on!” Allura said, leaping out of her chair with Shiro close behind. 

“Someone take this guy!” Keith said, his fork still to his rebel waiter’s throat, watching, frustrated, as Lance, Hunk, and Pidge ran out of the room.

Coran darted over and grabbed the rebel waiter, pulling the guy’s hands behind his back. “Thought you could pull a fast one while our Red Paladin was sitting right there, did you? He’s been in the belly of a weblum, you know!” Keith heard him say before he dashed out of the room.

He could see the others running through the lounge below him, Hunk at the base of the stairs shooting his bayard. Innocent Lumites took cover as the others dodged ahead through the fire.

“Don’t let them get through the doors!” Shiro shouted as Lance and Pidge nearly caught up with the rebels. Pidge aimed her bayard at the sliding glass doors as Lance began shooting from behind.

Keith leapt down the stairs five at a time, darting around Hunk just as he was lowering his bayard.

“Keith, buddy, you made it!” he heard Hunk say as they ran.

Pidge’s grappling hook caught on the edge of one of the doors, attaching itself. Pidge dove to the ground just as one of the rebels whirled around with a knife in her hand, identical to the one nearly used on Shiro.

“Lance!” Keith shouted.

Lance stood ahead of him, aiming at the rebels’ feet, taking them down, but too slowly.

“Lance, shoot the door!” he said. “In the top corner! Where the electrical pack is! Shoot it so the doors can’t open!”

Lance redirected his bayard without hesitation at Keith’s command. The electrical pack was small, barely visible, but Lance was the best shot Keith knew.

Pidge had let her bayard reel her in toward the doors, sliding across the glass floor and taking out the remaining rebels like bowling ball pins.

Lance squeezed the trigger.

The shot found its mark on its first attempt, a shower of sparks raining down over the entrance as the electrical pack exploded from the impact of the laser. Pidge slid to a halt in front of the broken, unmoving doors, leaping to her feet and holding out her bayard in battle stance.

“Going somewhere?” she said as the last rebel standing grinded to a halt in front of her.

One of the rebels on the floor pulled his knife out of his robe, but Hunk shot it out of his hand.

Keith almost wanted another one to try it, just so he’d have a chance to fight. But just then Solire’s voice sounded behind them, yelling, “Round up the rebels!”

A small army of guards rushed in around them, taking control of the small rebel group, relieving them of their weapons and binding their wrists together.

Keith felt a hand come down on his shoulder. “Good job, team,” Shiro said when Pidge and Lance made their way over. “Nice job covering from the back, Hunk, and good job taking them out from below, Pidge. Great shot at the doors, Lance.”

He shrugged, but he looked pleased, blue eyes bright. “It was Keith’s idea,” he said.

For a moment his eyes slid to Keith’s, and it was like everything that had happened in the past twelve hours had been erased and they were just them again, a good team. Keith’s stomach turned over pleasantly.

Then something flickered in Lance’s eyes and they skittered away. Keith felt his stomach turn over again, this time full of dread, extinguishing all traces of adrenaline from the battle and replacing it with an overwhelming sense of gutless frustration.

He wanted Lance to look at him like that again. He wanted it so badly it was a physical pain in his chest.

“And Keith,” said Shiro, turning to him. He squeezed his shoulder tightly, bringing Keith back with a jolt. His voice was warm. “Thanks for having my back upstairs.”

“’Course,” Keith said automatically. As if _not_ saving Shiro was an option.

Solire was approaching them, looking pale. “Paladins of Voltron,” he said, and bowed low. “My sincerest apologies. I’m sure our leader will have another gift of thanks arranged for saving us from these rebels.”

“So dinner’s off?” Hunk asked.  

“I’m afraid so. This must be reported to the queen immediately,” said Solire apologetically.

“Of course,” said Shiro. “I think we can all agree we’ve had a long day, and we enjoyed your tour, but I think it’s time we get back to the Castle for the night.”

Keith felt his first bout of relief all day.

“Of course,” said Solire. He put a hand on Shiro’s arm. “But please, don’t leave until we can appropriately make it up to you. Again.”

Shiro nodded. “Of course not.”

 

*

 

“You know, for a civilization made of glass, these rebels sure are having an easy time sneaking in with the royalty,” Pidge said, licking her spoon free of food goo.

“That’s because it’s all about blending in,” Lance said, pointing his own spoon at her.

“Yeah, like when Allura made herself look Galra and she and Shiro snuck into that base,” said Hunk.

“Thank you, I’m aware of how successful infiltration works by now,” Pidge said, deadpan. “I was just saying, it’s weird.”

It _was_ weird, Keith thought as he pushed his own food goo around his plate.

Coran had called for their own “celebratory dinner” after another “fantastic victory against the rebels,” which consisted of seven plates of “our best food goo” because no one, not even Hunk, had the energy to make anything else.

“It is suspicious that the rebels were found within their very midst twice,” said Coran, across from him.

“They weren’t in their midst the first time,” Keith said, looking up.

“Yeah, they were straight up pretending to _be_ them,” said Hunk. “You know, like the stealthy infiltration we were talking about five seconds ago.”

“Why weren’t the actual Lumite Royals there when we landed?” said Pidge. “Didn’t we arrange the meeting time with them? How’d the rebels find that out?”

Keith’s eyes slid to Shiro, who’d been quiet throughout the conversation, eyebrows drawn in thought. 

“And they keep going after Shiro first,” Keith said quietly.

“Obviously Zarkon’s behind it,” said Hunk.

“So next time we’re with the Lumites, everyone surround Shiro,” said Coran. “Bayards out. Or eating utensils.” He held up his spoon.

Hunk’s eyes found Keith’s. “Seriously, you’ve got some quick reflexes, dude. I barely saw you move.”

“Yeah, I’m sitting next to you next time we’re invited to a public dinner,” said Pidge.

“Hey,” said Lance, frowning and crossing his arms. “You’re forgetting who _jumped in front_ of a knife for Shiro just yesterday.”

Keith felt a dangerous spike of frustration. “Saving Shiro’s life isn’t a competition, Lance.”

Lance met his eyes for the first time since their brief moment after the battle, and this time there was no warmth in his gaze.

Keith’s fingers curled into fists.

“Of course it’s not,” Lance said, “but if we’re rating it on a scale of _one_ to _heroic_ -”

“Well then maybe,” Keith cut him off, raising his voice slightly, heartbeat suddenly dangerously erratic in his chest, “I shouldn’t have done anything, so that you could have _heroically_ dived across the table and taken the knife for him.”

Lance’s face flushed cherry red.

Shiro said, “Keith-”

But Keith kept going. “Except – oh, wait - you were too busy acting like an _idiot_ with the Lumite girl to even notice.”

Hunk gasped.

Lance’s eyes flashed. “For your information, _she_ approached _me_. But that’s not your information because I don’t see how that has anything to do with this!”

“It’s a distraction, Lance, and we don’t have time for distractions,” Keith said, every nasty emotion he had felt that day rising to the surface. His nostrils flared. “It’s a good thing I was watching the rebel that almost stabbed Shiro!”

“Yes, thank you, Keith, Paladin of the year!” Lance said, voice rising several notches. “Virtuous as ever! No distractions here! All business all the time!”

“Um, guys-” Coran tried.

“Gee, I don’t know what would happen if you didn’t focus on danger for one second of your life!” Lance said, nearly out of his chair, eyes blazing at Keith. “Maybe you’d go around playing _really horrible pranks on people!_ ”

Keith opened his mouth to argue, but the abrupt change of subject caught him off guard.

And then he felt a wave of a different kind of fury entirely roll over his body. They were _not_ doing this here, in front of everyone. He slapped both of his hands on the table in front of him, rattling all of their plates. “It _was_ _not_ -”

He cut himself off.

Lance’s eyes had narrowed, but there was suddenly something unsteady about his countenance. The hand that gripped his forgotten fork might have been trembling.

“Not what?” Lance asked, voice low.

Keith’s chest clenched. Abruptly, he stood up, chair scraping the floor behind him. “It doesn’t matter. This is stupid.”

“Of course it is,” Lance said. He leaned back in his chair, as if suddenly at ease. He let out a laugh that carried no humor. “Obviously going and beating level six trillion on the training deck is much more important. Sorry that I distracted you for a moment there. Wouldn’t want the Red Paladin losing his cool.”

Lance’s lips twitched into a smirk, and Keith felt such a surge of anger he nearly lost his breath. The condescension mixed with the fact that Lance knew exactly where Keith was about to go filled Keith with enough fury to fight ten Zarkons.

He couldn’t stand Lance looking at him. He couldn’t stand any of this. He needed to get out of here.

Without sparing a glance for any of the others, Keith turned around and made for the exit, leaving his barely touched plate of food goo behind him.

 

*

 

By the time Keith emerged from the training deck that night, his arms and legs were so raw from overuse they felt like rubber.

The air was dark and quiet as he slipped back into the Castle halls, his footsteps echoing in the empty shadows. He ran a hand through his sweaty hair, not caring what direction it stood in. The workout had left his brain pleasantly empty, and the anger from earlier was a distant echo, bled out by punches and kicks and intense sword practice.

The only problem was his stomach. He’d hardly eaten anything today, and he still didn’t have much of an appetite, but his stomach roiled with hunger. He directed his feet toward the kitchen for some food goo. Then he’d go back to his room and hopefully fall asleep before his brain got a chance to start thinking too hard.

He rounded the corner and stopped short of the doorway.

The light was already on, and with a lurch of his chest, Keith saw it was Lance leaning on the counter, slowly eating his own bowl of food goo.

He looked up at the sound of Keith’s footsteps, turning his head toward the door. Keith stood just around the edge of the doorway, cloaked in the shadows. He held his breath, heart suddenly knocking loudly in his chest.

“Who’s there?” Lance said. A pause. “Hunk, is it you? Because dude, if you can whip up something other than this food goo right now, I will love you forever. Not that I don’t already love you forever. Because I do, duh. It’s just that this food goo is not hitting the spot right now.”

Another pause during which Keith considered just turning the other way and Lance would never be the wiser.

“Hello?” Lance said, sounding slightly more hesitant. Keith’s stomach grumbled with hunger, and he gnashed his teeth before Lance could start effortlessly rolling off another love confession for Hunk.

“Not Hunk,” Keith said, stepping into the light of the kitchen.

Immediately Lance tensed, standing up straight. Something close to fear flickered through his eyes before they darkened.

Even Keith, hardly a master of social queues, could appreciate the way Lance wore his emotions so blatantly on his face. Except now, the glare that settled on it made him feel slightly ill.

“Oh,” Lance said. He took in Keith’s messy hair, his sweaty t-shirt, and the towel around his neck. “So you did make it to level six billion. Good for you.”

Keith didn’t say anything. He was in no mood to be goaded, spent past the point of fighting.

“Whatever,” Lance said. He waved a hand carelessly and turned back toward the counter. “I was trying to enjoy a nice bowl of food goo. In _peace.”_

“Didn’t sound like you were enjoying it that much,” Keith muttered. He walked past him to get his own bowl.

“Well I was,” said Lance, turning his chin up slightly. “But you know what, I’m not really in the mood for _this_ ,” he gestured to Keith in his entirety, “so I think I’m going to make this a takeout order.” He gathered his bowl of food goo and his spoon in his hands and made for the door.

Keith frowned, a strange mixture of relief and bitter disappointment at Lance’s retreating back settling inside him instead of the anger of before.  He should call him back, he thought. Call him back and set things right and they could be friends again.

 _Could_ they be friends again? The hurt split open in Keith’s chest all over again at the thought.

“Wait.”

Keith’s fingers gripped his empty bowl at Lance’s voice, and Lance walked back into the room, fist tight around the spoon he held at his side. He was looking straight at Keith.

“This is a dumb question, but I just- need to make sure.” Lance’s cheeks were slightly flushed, eyes wide. He swallowed. He hesitated for a fraction of a second before he said, in the space of a beat, “It really was a joke, right?”

The question hung the air for half a tick too long.

The words slowly wrapped around Keith’s heart like an iron fist, squeezing.  

 _It really was a joke,_ right?

_Right?_

_No, no-_ Keith heard his brain rush to answer. _No - of course not –_

Lance stood frozen, skin oddly pale under the florescent light.

_A joke._

_Right?_

“Obviously,” Keith heard his mouth say.

The answer lingered for a moment between them.

Lance’s fist went slack around his spoon.

“Obviously,” Lance repeated, a strange chuckle escaping his lips, eyes darting away from Keith’s face. “Right. Stupid. Hilarious. Guess I gave you a lot to work with, huh?”

The bowl nearly slid from Keith’s fingers.

“I- what?” Keith said.

Lance laughed again, that same, strange chuckle that almost sounded more like choking. Lance looked at the ceiling – anywhere but at Keith – and Keith noticed, for the first time, how the outer rims of his eyes were just so slightly reddened.

“Don’t act like you don’t know,” Lance said, voice as bitter as Keith had ever heard it.

Something very cold settled in the pit of Keith’s stomach.

Then Lance turned on his heel and disappeared from the room, not turning back this time, gone before Keith could say anything else, before Keith could even think of what to say.

Keith walked all the way back to his room before he realized the bowl he still held in his hands was empty. 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading! Part 2 coming soon! Feedback is much appreciated :)


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Keith resolves to take action. The Lumites host a ball.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> THANK YOU everyone for all your comments and kudos, your enthusiasm for this story means so much to me :') Some of your comments cracked me up...sorry for infuriating you guys with the miscommunication trope. I love a torturous good time. 
> 
> Just want to put a trigger warning for blood in this chapter. There's no excessive violence or gratuitous descriptions or anything, just battle wounds, but I just wanted to let you know in case that doesn't float your boat.

“A _ball?_ ” Pidge said, as if the very word offended her.

“Oh yes,” said Coran. The morning sun glittered around them through the massive windows of the control room. “We get to make ourselves pretty!”

Keith was with Pidge on this one. Out of everything in the universe, attending a ball was quite possibly the last thing he wanted to do. Death was higher on the list.

“We’re Voltron,” he heard himself say. “We don’t have time for balls.”

Coran switched off the hologram on the control deck and pointed at him. “Now, now,” he said, “just because you’re a defender of the universe doesn’t mean you’re above a night of frivolous prancing.”

“Does Keith even know how to prance?” asked Hunk.

“Frivolous _torture,_ more like,” said Pidge. “If anyone tries to make me wear a dress-”

“No one’s going to make you wear anything you don’t want to, Pidge,” said Allura, walking around the control deck, where the hologram invitation by Queen Noxana had been moments before. “But their invitation is an honor, and we must treat it as such. They want to apologize,” She furrowed her eyebrows slightly.

“Funny how they keep having to do that,” Keith said darkly.

“They also want us to be there in case the rebels strike again!” said Coran.

“So they want to apologize to us with a party that we also have to be _security_ for?” said Pidge.

“Well, to be fair, that is why they asked us here,” said Hunk.

Everyone was quiet for a moment. Finally, Pidge sighed with an air of meeting her doom and said, “So that means we have to go, doesn’t it?”

Shiro, who up until that moment had been listening in quiet, contemplative silence, spoke up. “We do,” he said, looking around at all of them, meeting each of their eyes. “But we need to make sure we’re on our guards. And that we watch each other’s backs.” 

Then he walked out of the control room, Coran and Allura at his heels.  The three of them fell into quiet conversation. The doors slid shut behind them.

“Be on the offensive _and_ the defensive. Got it,” said Hunk. His eyes fell to the other side of the room, and he frowned. “Hey, Lance? Buddy? You okay?”

Lance, who had been standing quietly on the opposite side of the control deck, looked up. He stood with his arms crossed and was staring at the place where Queen Noxana’s hologram had been several moments before.

“Hm?” Lance said, standing up straight, eyes focusing on Hunk. “Right, yeah, I’m fine. Just a little tired from all the rebel-smashing.” He grinned at Hunk, and then Pidge, and even from across the room Keith could see the shadows beneath his eyes.

He didn’t look at Keith.

“Will you be up for the ball tonight?” Pidge asked, raising her eyebrows, but there was an upward, knowing tilt to her lips.

Lance immediately became animated, placing a hand on his chest in offense. “Me? A ball? Full of pretty ladies? And gentlemen? Pidge, you wound me.”

Pidge and Hunk laughed, but Keith’s chest gave an uncomfortable twist. Lance’s parting words from the previous night had haunted him all night long.

_“Guess I gave you a lot to work with, huh?”_

Was it because he’d flirted with Keith like he’d flirted with everyone? Or was it simply that he’d flirted with _Keith?_

_“Don’t act like you don’t know.”_

Keith’s chest hurt.

And either way, Lance’s words about the ball brought him no comfort.

Keith watched as Lance walked over and flung his arms around Hunk and Pidge’s shoulders, and the three of them left the control room together, laughing about something new. Pidge cast a look back at the Keith, but Keith waved them on, even though his chest twinged acutely watching them. 

Lance hadn’t spared him a single glance that morning.

_“It really was a joke, right?”_

The question had plagued him till dawn. He hadn’t bothered to look at his own face this morning, but it didn’t really matter. The shadows under his eyes probably looked no better than Lance’s, which was saying a lot more about Lance than it was about him. The thought set him on edge.

Keith closed his eyes, trying to settle his mind. _Patience yields focus._

 _“It really was a joke,_ right _?”_

He’d come to one conclusion: he wished he could go back in time and answer that question differently.

He opened his eyes again. They fell on the empty doors, on the way the sunlight curved through the windows of the control room.  Keith felt the room’s enormity now that there was no one else there with him. He recalled the hurt on Lance’s face and the hurt in Lance’s voice and the shadows on his skin that he cared for so meticulously.

Curling his fingers into his gloved palms, he came to another conclusion. 

He would fix this.

*

“Keith, there you are!”

As soon as Keith stepped into the doorway of the control room, he regretted it. He’d spent the few hours wandering the Castle, trying to make some sort of plan of action concerning Lance and coming up short, conjuring nothing but a burning fire in his chest in his need to fix things _now._ But even if he wanted to, Lance, and the others, were nowhere to be seen.

Now he knew why.

Coran strode over and pulled Keith into the room by the elbow, where a Lumite attendant stood surrounded by mounds of shimmering clothes. Distress was written clear across the attendant’s face; the clothes were the queen’s most expensive formal wear. “I was getting nervous that you might not show up! Everyone’s been busy gussying up, and now it’s your turn.” Coran winked at him. “Don’t worry, I’ll make sure you still keep your cool _facade.”_

“Uh-”

Coran darted around the piles, picking up garments, considering them closely, and emitting a noise of dissent before he let them fall back to the floor in a heap. The Lumite attendant bristled, face growing redder with every piece of clothing dropped to the ground like a discarded tissue.

“Hmm…no,” Coran said, considering a crimson pair of trousers before tossing them over his shoulder. “No, no- what do you think of this?” He whirled around to Keith and held up a shimmering silver cape.

“I-”

“No, no, you’re right,” Coran said, shaking his head and slinging it away. It landed on Pidge’s chair. The attendant was nearly vibrating with rage.

Coran paused, eyes skimming the mountains of clothing, and then, quick as a flash, he grabbed three different pieces from three different piles. He turned back to Keith.

“Strip.”

Keith didn’t move. “What?”

Coran snapped his fingers. “Off with those Earth rags! You need to get these on before I send you into hair and makeup.”

“Hair and make-” Keith started, but the next thing he knew, his familiar red jacket was on the floor with the rest of the clothes, and a sleek, golden shirt probably worth a thousand red jackets was being forced over his head.

The material was light, nearly weightless, and it slid seamlessly over his skin as soon as his head fit through the neck hole. It felt strange, _too_ light, like he was hardly wearing anything at all, and, scowling, Keith decided that he didn’t like it. Coran grinned at him.

It took the space of a minute to complete the ensemble.

Looking down at himself, Keith took in a shimmering shirt of gold beneath a jacket of bright, vivid red. The jacket was infused with an intricate, faint yellow threading that glimmered beneath the light of the control room. It fit him perfectly, as if it had been sewn to be worn over his skin. It ended where his pants began near his waist.  The golden shirt was tucked into the trousers. They were the same red as his jacket, and they clung to his legs in much the same way. The color reminded him of fire.

“Hm,” Coran said, hand on his chin, considering him. After a pause, he stepped forward and flipped up the collar of Keith’s jacket. In contrast with the rest of the jacket, the collar was the same gold as his shirt, sewn with swirls of red. It brushed the bottom of his ears.

“There we go,” Coran said, sounding pleased. He rubbed his nails against the lapels of his own coat.

Keith felt like a big, sparking firework. He itched to put his own clothes back on.

“That was easier than I expected! Lance took much longer. He wouldn’t stop imposing on my choices-”

“Sure,” said Keith quickly, looking down at his body again. “Well, thanks-”

“Not so fast,” Coran said, grabbing his shoulder as Keith made to keep walking. “You have an appointment with the hairstylist.”

The Lumite attendant sighed a breath of relief as Coran directed Keith out of the control room.

 

*

 

“ _You’re_ the hairdresser?” Keith looked at Coran in the vanity mirror.

A pretty Lumite woman with little green gems hanging from the ends of her cropped hair tried to push Coran out of the way. “Actually, _I’m-”_

Coran stood behind Keith like she wasn’t even there. “I’m a man of many talents, you should know this by now, Keith,” said Coran. He unsheathed a pair of scissors.

“Hey,” Keith said, alarmed, pushing himself out of the chair. “If you think you’re cutting my hair -”

“No one’s getting their hair cut,” the Lumite girl said and snatched the scissors from Coran’s hand. She turned to Keith and tugged on a lock of his hair painfully. “This hair should not be cut for all the riches in Lumior. Look how _dark_ it is, the way it shines! What kind of shampoo do you use?”

“Um.” Keith blinked as Coran glared daggers at the girl from the corner of the room. “The Altean kind? It’s probably over 10,000 years old, I don’t think we’ve needed to restock yet.”

“As good as the day it was made!” Coran declared, puffing his chest “Time doesn’t corrode Altean goods.”

“Hm,” the hairdresser pursed her lips, sounding distinctly unimpressed. “No matter. I will unlock your hair’s true potential.” Her expression cleared and her eyes began to glow again as she looked at Keith’s head, as if she could see all the potential hidden in his uneven tresses. She pulled out two sheets of some material that resembled aluminum foil.

“No dyeing it either,” Keith said quickly.

The woman sighed, short and frustrated. “You and the small green one. So protective of your crude hairstyles.” She rolled her eyes and placed the foil on Keith’s head. “Nothing I’m doing won’t come out with a simple wash,” she said, and added sourly, “unfortunately.”

Keith shut his eyes. There were a billion things he’d rather be doing right now. When he became a Paladin of Voltron he didn’t expect that it would consist of _this._ He didn’t care about being a royal guest; he just wanted to fight evil aliens.

Lance had probably loved it. He was definitely the type of person to talk to the hairdresser during a haircut, and definitely to a hairdresser as pretty as this one.

Keith was going to come out of this looking like a firework, and Lance was going to look beautiful, and Keith was not going to be prepared for it.

He tried to ignore the unease settling in the pit of his stomach.   

But he was still going to fix things. The first chance he got, no matter what he looked like, he was going to try.

Besides, Lance always looked beautiful. Keith had thought so since the first time he’d seen him at the Garrison, all energy and wide grins as he gesticulated wildly with his hands.

Of course, Keith had not known who he was then and never imagined that months and month later he would be fighting alongside that same wild boy in defense of the universe, much less that he’d be the recipient of those very wide smiles himself. He had not known that he would probably fight Zarkon himself if he posed a threat to that smile. 

“Don’t worry, Keith, we’re not doing anything permanent to your hair, you can stop looking so worried,” said Coran.

“ _I’m_ not doing anything permanent to his hair.”

When Keith opened his eyes, he caught sight of the hairdresser swatting at Coran’s hand in the mirror. Coran leapt back, yelping.

“What?” Keith said.

“You looked troubled,” the hairdresser said. She paused. “It _is_ just hair.” Her face twisted into an expression that told him she didn’t agree with the sentiment.

“Right,” said Keith, and tried to dissolve the thoughts of Lance from his brain.

 

*

 

As soon as Keith got back to his room after grabbing his red jacket from the control room, he immediately kicked off the shoes Coran had given him. If things _did_ go awry, unreasonable footwear should be the least of his problems. It’s not like his outfit would offer him any protection. Customs were idiotic sometimes, he decided. 

He slipped his own boots on, not caring at all if it caused some horrendous fashion blunder ( _he_ thought they looked cool), and slipped a small blade into his right one. He wished he had another knife, but contrary to popular belief (i.e. _Lance’s_ belief), he didn’t have an arsenal of knives in his room to choose from. 

It would have to do. And though he very much doubted it given the track record of the Lumite royals, he hoped that he wouldn’t have to use it.

Attending this ball was probably a terrible idea, but – politics. Keith frowned to himself as he tugged his gloves on, too.

Keith had been the last to get ready, and Coran had told him everyone would be gathered in the control room.

Even though he knew he should be moving quickly, Keith couldn’t help but pause in front of his mirror, curious of the full effect of what Coran had done to him.

And honestly? It wasn’t that bad. Even though Keith would rather be wearing his own jacket – it was _cool_ , okay? – he could appreciate the way Coran had managed to preserve Keith’s style like he said he would. The red, the tall collar of his jacket, the way his shirt tucked into his pants— it didn’t look quite as ridiculous as Keith had thought, especially now with the effect of his hair.

It was actually quite amazing, what the hairdresser had done. It was as if his hair was blanketed in sparkling white stars, like she’d turned his dark hair into the night sky. It wasn’t like glitter, exactly, or tiny gem stones or some sort of diamond— it was _light_ embedded into his hair. Keith lifted up a hand to touch it, and if he hadn’t known something was different, his hair would have felt as it always did, like nothing was even there.

Keith had objected when Coran cornered him with the makeup, but the hairdresser girl had spun him around and done it before he could even blink an eye. Just two red, glimmering streaks expanding from the corners of his eyes like wings, tinged with the slightest bit of gold. It _did_ look kind of cool. 

He’d probably look _really_ cool riding his bike with it, a flash of light darting through the air, like some sort of fiery comet.

Keith shook his head and looked away from his reflection. He grabbed his bayard. This wasn’t about looking cool. They had business to take care of. And he wasn’t going to pilot anything with this outfit, he was going to a _ball_.

Keith frowned to himself as he made his way to the control room to meet the others.

“Ah, there he is,” said Coran as he approached the group waiting for him at the entrance. He twiddled his mustache. “Looking quite _spark_ ling if I do say so mysel- why aren’t you wearing the ruby studded shoes I gave you?! And those blasted gloves!”

Coran put a hand over his heart, wincing as if Keith had actually pained him. He was wearing the long, shimmering silver cape he’d rejected for Keith.

Keith shrugged. “Sorry.”

“Wow, Keith,” said Hunk, and Keith’s eye slid to his teammate, whose mouth hung open. “Your _hair.”_

Keith hadn’t realized they were all staring at his head. His skin prickled uncomfortably under the attention.

Hunk’s clothing was made of a similar material to his own, mostly yellow and a bit heftier than Keith’s own lithe outfit. The band tied around his head was a sleek, gleaming orange and he had little yellow gemstones along the bottom of his eyes. He looked like a bright, cheerful sun.

Pidge wore a soft brown blouse that fell to her knees.  A long thin cardigan of shimmering forest green fell just beneath it with pants of a matching color. Around her head hung teardrops of green attached to a thin, silver headband that spanned over her forehead. Streaks of brown with the tiniest flecks of green crossed beneath her eyes, coming together almost like leaves. No dress, then, Keith thought.

Shiro wore a suit so black Keith wasn’t sure he would be visible at all if he was under the cover of shadow. His jacket hung low in the back, like coattails, and streaks of black and silver were painted beneath his eyes. They reminded Keith of American football back on Earth, only far more elegant.

Allura- well, Allura looked gorgeous. Her dress was simple, soft petal pink. Thin, airy and shimmering, it came together at her waist and hung neatly to her feet, just barely missing the floor. Her hair was pulled back in an elaborate braid, intertwined with glimmering purple and blue gemstones and the glittery light effect not unlike Keith’s own, except on Allura’s light hair it was much subtler. Beneath her eyes were thin lines of pink gemstones over faint clouds of blue, glimmering blush.

All of his friends looked otherworldly in their formal Lumite clothing, but Keith couldn’t help himself. When he saw Lance, his breath caught in his throat.

He stood beside Hunk, and everything was blue.

Lance’s outfit was the airiest, the most shimmering. Keith imagined that if someone so much as brushed past him with the lightest touch, ripples would cascade in every direction, like the surface of a lake. He wore a simple tunic of the most beautiful ocean blue. It more than shimmered, it _glittered_ , sparkling when he shifted and reflecting new light. It hung nearly to his knees, overlapping long, loose pants of the same material that bunched around his ankles leading to a silver pair of shoes that were, undoubtedly, the most sparkly thing in the room.

On his head hung a headband not entirely unlike Pidge’s, except it came short of his forehead, instead hanging nearly to the nape of his neck. The tiniest stones of blue and white hung from it, dangling over his bangs, over the tips of his ears, gleaming.

It was what they’d done to his face that took Keith’s breath away. It was like he wore reverse eyeshadow. The skin beneath his eyes – so bruised with exhaustion this morning - was brushed alive with a shimmering blue, just grazing over the tips of his cheeks, sparkling like nothing Keith had ever seen, bringing the blue in his eyes out so fiercely it made Keith’s heart hurt. He looked like a body of water beneath the unrelenting rays of the sun streaming in from outside.

Around his neck he wore the shimmering blue scarf he bought in the Mackoshian market.

He caught Lance’s eye, who, he realized, was staring back at him, eyes wide, looking rather like he’d been struck over the head, a bright flush blooming beneath his blue makeup.

This ball was a terrible, terrible idea.

First of all, they were likely walking into a trap. Second, when Keith imagined reconciling with Lance, they weren’t wearing makeup and Lance didn’t look half as enchanting.

As if Shiro could read his mind about the former, he said, “Stay on your guards tonight around everyone. No matter who these rebels are, it’s safest to expect attack. And don’t go off alone. We’ve already seen the use in having a pair of eyes on each other’s backs.”

Keith frowned. “That’s the plan?”

“The princess and I plan to woo the queen,” said Coran.

“This is also a diplomatic mission, if you do recall,” said Allura.

“Princess Allura and I are masters at diplomatic conversation,” Coran said, straightening his shoulders. He lowered his voice conspiratorially. “I expect the queen will be too caught up in a debate on mildipoo taxes to attempt murder on Shiro again.”

“What is-” Hunk opened his mouth, then shut it. “Never mind.”

“So you’re saying you think that was really her?” asked Pidge, gems in her hair twinkling as she leaned forward.

“We can’t assume anything,” said Shiro. “Just remember to be on your guard at all times. Everyone have your bayard?”

They all nodded. There was a knock at the door. When Coran opened it, it was the Lumite attendant who had brought them the formal clothes, ready to escort them to the ball. His face turned sour when he saw Coran.

“Ready, Paladins?” said Allura.

Coran made sure his cape was hanging from his shoulders at just the right angle. He smiled at them all. “Off to the prancing!”

*

 

Keith couldn’t help the way his eyes kept finding the back of Lance’s head on the way over. The little gems in his hair sparkled in the sunlight, winking almost mockingly at him.

It was worse than Keith thought.

Lance had always been good looking, had never _not_ been attractive to Keith, but this was something else entirely. This was an ethereal beauty, one that made Keith’s stomach hurt, one that made him want to stare at Lance forever and hope uselessly that if he did, he might find Lance staring back.

Keith’s fist tightened around the handle of his bayard. The force of his longing made him want to slash something.

He had to fix it, this tension between them, before danger struck, before Lance flirted with anyone else, because even though Keith had been through a lot of things as a Paladin of Voltron, he didn’t quite know if he could make it through that.

(He could, but he didn’t really want to.)

The Lumite palace stretched before them, enormous and iridescent and housing a ballroom somewhere inside. The yellow sunshine created a kaleidoscope of reflections, the very ground itself made of some sleek, glittering tile. It was beautiful in a way that Keith had a hard time believing it was real. Keith’s eyes drifted to Lance again.

He took a deep breath. _Patience yields focus._ This type of situation was probably not what Shiro had intended that phrase for, but this was Lance, and Keith never knew how much patience he would need.

He picked up the pace and steered his feet forward purposefully. Shiro glanced at him, but he ignored it.

“Lance-”

Keith was still half behind Lance when he said it, and he could see the way Lance’s shoulder’s stiffened at his voice.

He fell into step beside him. Lance glanced at him, and looked away.

“Lance,” Keith said again, and up closer Lance looked so blindingly gorgeous it made it hard for his brain to focus for a moment. “I think we need to talk.”

Lance glanced at him again. His eyes skittered away just as quickly, like Keith was the opposite end of a magnet and they couldn’t quite meet.

“We’re talking right now,” Lance finally said after a pause.

 _Patience yields focus._ “Lance.”

“I don’t see why you’re bugging _me_ for a bit of socialization. Is no one else good enough for a chat?” said Lance, eyes on the palace. “I hear Hunk is pretty good at talking about physics once you get him started. Or you could ask Pidge about technology. I’m sure Shiro might have a thing or two to say about, like, big arm muscles.”

 _Patience. Yields. Focus._  “That’s not what I mean,” he said, “and you know it.” 

Lance looked at him, but once again his eyes bounced away. “Do I?”

Keith’s fingers twitched in his gloves. “Lance,” he finally said after a long pause, because he was getting nowhere like this, and at this rate he never would. “I think- we shouldn’t fight.”

Lance’s eyes slid to him and slid away again.

“You think we shouldn’t fight,” he repeated, voice flat. “A truly novel idea, Keith. If only you’d come up with that when we first _met_.”

Keith’s chest tightened with a ping of aggravation. Why couldn’t Lance take him seriously? Why couldn’t _he_ be better with words? “Lance-”

“You know,” Lance cut him off, eyes on the sky. The blue sparkled on the tips of his cheeks in the sunlight. “If you don’t want to fight, you could stop giving us stuff to fight about.”

Keith frowned. _“Me?”_

Lance nodded, eyes still upturned.

“ _You’re_ the one who turned saving Shiro’s life in a competition yesterday, Lance,” Keith said, his patience rapidly slipping. He knew the fight they had at dinner the night before wasn’t the issue, but it was the only one he could bring himself to touch.

“Well _you’re_ the one who started hurling personal insults,” Lance shot back, all traces of any previous wit vanishing, his voice hard. His eyes met Keith’s for a full second before he pulled them back. _“‘We shouldn’t fight.’_ Don’t kid yourself, Keith.”

Keith’s fingers curled. “We’re friends, Lance.”

Lance glared at the sky. “Yeah, maybe for a little while,” he said darkly.

Anger and a black kind of hurt hit Keith squarely in the chest. He said, bitingly, “Fine. If you don’t want to be friends because of one dumb argument, I guess it’s not worth trying to save anyway.”

Lance laughed, but it sounded sharp and devoid of any sort of humor at all. “One dumb argument, sure.”

Keith looked at him. “What are you talking about?” he demanded, but there was an unease itching its way up his chest. He knew exactly what Lance was talking about.

“I’m just saying,” Lance said, and there was a bitterness in his voice that Keith had never heard before. “You can go on all you like about our arguments and take offense about whatever you want, but _you’re_ the one who took advantage of my feelings.” His voice didn’t waver, but he looked anywhere but at Keith. The sky, the ground, the looming palace.

He was expecting it– this was the problem he needed to address all along – but still, an icy chill washed over Keith as Lance’s words sunk in, heart thumping painfully. That wasn’t it, not at all, it was the _opposite_ of that _._ His tongue tripped over his words as he tried to speak.

“Lance, I- that’s- no-”

“Welcome, Paladins of Voltron!”

The voice cut Keith off, splitting through the air from every angle as it reverberated off all the glass surfaces. Keith felt an enormous stab of annoyance when he saw it was Solire, their tour guide from the previous day. Solire stood at the top of the palace steps, wearing a golden outfit that was shimmering so brightly in the sun it was almost hard to look at.

“And of course, Princess Allura and Coran,” Solire said, bowing. “Please do come in, our guests will begin arriving soon.”

Some had already arrived, Keith noticed for the first time, in dazzling formalwear that made his outfit feel tame. One woman had gems hanging from the ends of her shoulder-length hair that fell all the way down to her feet, white and glittering like diamonds.

What did any of it matter? Lance’s words were still echoing in his ears. _You’re_ _the one who took advantage of my feelings._

Keith turned around to face him again, but Lance was already inside, up the stairs with all the others. Keith’s stomach sank slowly, and he felt a hand land on his left shoulder.

“What’s up with you and Lance?” Shiro’s voice was gentle.

Keith felt another stab of annoyance. How did Shiro always seem to see everything, to know everything? Usually he appreciated it, but right now he just wanted to fix things with Lance and be done with it, not endure a consultation with Shiro when they were supposed to be on the lookout for rebels.

He at least managed to resist the impulse to shrug Shiro’s hand off his shoulder. “It doesn’t matter,” he said, not meeting his eyes.

“Of course it matters,” Shiro said. “You and Lance work well together.”

“We can still do Voltron stuff, if that’s what you’re worried about,” Keith snapped.

“That’s not what I meant,” said Shiro. He squeezed Keith’s shoulder. “I meant as friends. Or as…whatever you want.” He looked at Keith meaningfully, the silver beneath his eyes glinting in the late sun. “Don’t give it up over a fight.”

“I wasn’t going to,” Keith said, and he meant it. Nothing was going as planned, but he would try again.

Shiro smiled. “I didn’t think so,” he said. He let go of Keith’s shoulder and clapped him on the back. “Just be patient with him. Lance might go at a mile a minute sometimes, but not everything needs to be rushed. I think he likes being worth your time.”

He suddenly thought back to what he’d told Pidge ages ago, that night he and Lance had defeated her and Hunk at that board game. The night they’d been such a good team, a night full of nudges and touches and open flirtations. _He was a defender of the universe, he had no time for frivolity, for being with Lance._

Keith felt his anger melt away. “Of course he’s worth my time.”

Shiro nudged him. “Tell _him_ that.” He glanced up at the palace. “Come on, we still have a mission.”

“Right. Yeah,” Keith said, except his mind was whirling with _Lance Lance Lance,_ and he needed to find him, needed to explain to him, needed to tell him that he was worth Keith’s time, all of his time, and Keith wasn’t taking advantage of his feelings because he hadn’t even known for sure that Lance _had_ feelings – for him – Lance had feelings for him –

Keith’s heart thumped painfully in his chest as he followed Shiro up the stairs with the distinct impression that they weren’t walking into the palace with their mind on the same potential battle.

 

*

 

“So,” Solire said, finishing his speech of apologies and of optimism that the chance of rebel infiltration would be low at the ball that night, “we appreciate that you are here for our protection, but do enjoy the ball.”

“Don’t mind if I do,” Keith heard Lance say from the other side of the group. When Keith glanced over, Lance was scanning the crowd that had begun to leak into the ballroom, which was quite possibly the most beautiful place Keith had ever been inside. It was simply an enormous glass cube, and like with every other place Keith had been on this planet, the glass let the sun do all the work. The late afternoon light, the rose tinted sky, and the glass combined with the shimmering outfits and gemstone hair of all the Lumite guests were positively iridescent. The very ground glittered beneath their feet.

It was almost _too_ much.

But not for Lance, obviously, who stood gazing out at the guests, mouth hanging open slightly, eyes feasting on the people around him.

 _He has feelings for you,_ Keith reminded himself, tempering the feeling of icy dejection, but when Lance’s eyes landed on a particularly handsome gentleman with red gemstones in his hair, it was hard to convince himself of that. It felt, suddenly, like the chance of Lance returning his feelings was about likely as the rebels _not_ attacking them tonight.

Keith glanced over at Shiro. He was flanked by both Pidge and Allura. Coran and Hunk stood slightly farther away. Keith felt the tiniest bit of relief. At least they were sticking to the plan and watching each other’s backs.

Except, it would seem, himself and Lance.

Well, Keith was certainly keeping an eye on Lance’s back. It didn’t seem to bother Lance at all that Keith was left exposed.

Whatever. Keith could protect himself, and Lance, _and_ Shiro, and every single Lumite in this place. That’s what they were here for, wasn’t it? He tightened his grip on his bayard, eyes roaming the sun-stained ballroom, blood curling with aggravation. Music, a soft, tinkling tune, began to play. It sounded as if glass itself was being used as a musical instrument, which, Keith realized, it probably was.

When Keith glanced back over, Lance was already looking at him, but his eyes bounced away just as quickly yet again. 

So Lance _was_ watching his back. Or glancing at it. Keith hated how much the realization warmed him. 

A high-pitched giggle broke through the crowd and drew Lance’s flickering gaze farther away. Keith’s heart tumbled. He knew that laugh.

It was the girl from the night before, the one whom Lance had sat with at dinner before the meal had been so unceremoniously cancelled.

She was dressed entirely in a deep, shimmering pink, and a gold headband circled her head over her glossy hair, which fell down her back in lush curls.

She took Lance’s hand, whispered something into his ear that made Lance smile slowly, and then he was grinning widely, and she was gesturing to the dance floor and he was nodding, and she pulled him in, reaching into a fold in the side of her dress that he couldn’t see-

 _No,_ Keith thought blindly.

He felt his legs moving before his brain had fully comprehended what her action meant, hand wielding his bayard, adrenaline surging into his every limb because fine, Lance didn’t have to keep an eye on Keith’s back, but if he wasn’t even going to watch his _own-_

He brought his bayard down between them just as she was pulling her hand out her dress. He grabbed her wrist. The girl gasped. Lance jolted and let out a shout.

The music stopped.

 _“Keith_ ,” Lance hissed, his eyes going dark. Everyone in the ballroom was staring, Keith still had his bayard between them and his hand wrapped tightly around the girl’s wrist. “ _Please_ let go of me, the girl said, trying to yank it free, but Keith held firm.

“You were reaching into your dress,” he said, eyes narrowing. “I saw you.”

“You have got this wrong-”

“I _saw_ you.”

“Keith, let go of her.” Shiro’s voice sounded behind him.

Keith didn’t let go.

“Keith-” Lance said through his teeth.

Shiro and Solire appeared suddenly on either side of them. Shiro was frowning, but Solire looked positively frightened.

“Why, unhand her!”

“She has something in her dress,” said Keith. “She’s a rebel, she was going to do something, she was going to hurt Lance-”

“I was _not,_ ” the girl said, eyes boring into Keith’s.

People were watching.

“Nothing to see, nothing to see!” said Solire, waving his hands. “No harm done, just a false alarm!” People continued to stare and he glared where the band of musicians stood on a small stage with their long, glassy instruments. The music started again.

“Will you show us what you were reaching for?” Shiro asked.

The girl glowered at him. “I told you, it was nothing.” 

“We have been appointed protectors of this ball,” said Shiro. “If you have nothing to hide, where’s the harm in showing us?” 

“And if you’re not a rebel, what does it matter?” Keith demanded.

The girl stared so hard at him that Keith nearly expected to physically feel the fire in it.

“I thought the rebels were after _him,”_ she said, looking pointedly at Shiro. “So why would I take a stab at him?” She looked at Lance, and then back to Keith.

 _To take a stab at any of us is to weaken Shiro,_ Keith thought, but didn’t say. If she was a rebel, she knew exactly what she was doing.

Lance, who hadn’t said anything, looked at her. “What were you reaching into your pocket for, Zonia?”

The girl – Zonia – lifted her chin. “A gift.”

“Show it to us,” Keith growled, and this time she did not flinch. Unblinking and looking at Lance, then at Keith, and then at Shiro, she reached into the fold of her dress and pulled out a small object.

When she pulled out the disk, Keith heard the tiniest intake of breath from Solire.

“That is a weapon!” he said, and immediately stepped forward and grabbed Zonia. He slapped a hand over her mouth. “Do not take that from her! If it touches anyone else’s skin it will detonate!”

“Detonate?” Lance said, eyes widening as he took a step backward and lifted up his bayard.

Lance had said it loudly; several guests looked around at them, panicked. Behind them Keith spotted Pidge and Hunk, watching and ready with their own bayards.

“No need for fear!” said Solire. “This is under control! Voltron is here to protect you!” He looked at Keith from around Zonia’s hair. “Thank you, Red Paladin, for catching a rebel.”

Keith paused, then nodded. Zonia was struggling in his arms, eyes flying from Lance to Keith to Shiro.

Shiro met Keith’s eyes. “I’ll help Solire.” Solire insisted he had Zonia under control, but a sheen of sweat had broken out over his forehead. Shiro looked between Keith and Lance, an intensity in his eyes. “I want you two to go fix whatever it is that’s come between you. Now.”

Keith stepped forward. “But Shiro-”

“Pidge and Hunk will have my back,” Shiro said. “Obviously you two are good at having each other’s, and you had a good eye, Keith, but next time a temper could land us in actual danger.” His eyes flickered between them, and then he turned to follow Solire, who had already left, dragging Zonia through the crowd.

Keith felt a spike of anxiety of Shiro left his line of sight again, and for a moment he didn’t move. Although they were surrounded by dozens and dozens of guests, he felt suddenly very alone with just Lance beside him.

His heartbeat kicked up, clashing in time with the music.

When he finally looked around at Lance, the other Paladin’s eyes were sliding away from him. Keith felt a flash of irritation. Why couldn’t Lance just _look_ at him?

He grabbed Lance’s arm. “Come on.”

Lance immediately pulled away, a glare on his face. “What are you doing?”

Keith looked back at him, aware that his gaze was cold. “Following Shiro’s orders.”

“Oh, _now_ you choose to follow orders?”

Keith felt another, stronger, stab of irritation. The “stubborn, impulsive” Red Paladin personality traits Allura had described when they’d found their lions were too old to throw back in his face by now. 

“ _Yes,”_ he said. “And I do all the time. Now come on, there are too many people around here.”

He turned around, hoping _Lance_ wasn’t going to be too stubborn right now to follow him _._

 

*

 

Keith didn’t stop until he found somewhere completely empty and completely quiet.

He knew Lance was following by the footsteps he heard behind him, but neither of them said anything and Keith didn’t look back. Keith led them past glass room after glass room, through lucid oranges and inky pinks of a sun setting beyond the walls, the air growing stiller as they traveled farther away from the sound. The fabric of Keith’s outfit gleamed red and fiery as ever. 

Finally he found a room so silent and still he could see particles of dust hanging in the air, illuminated by sunlight like a galaxy of stars. The rose-tinged sky hung clear through the tall ceiling, leaving no room for shadows. Everything reflected off of everything else.

He stopped, and he heard Lance’s footsteps stop behind him. Keith could feel the blood pumping in his veins now that he was still, rushing in his ears and beating through his heart. He turned around.

Keith’s breath caught, but he didn’t make a sound.

Lance looked up, and he was a sea of perfect blue on a planet of pinks and golds and yellows. Every part of him glowed against the sunset, edges bleeding into a rosy violet.  

He met Keith’s gaze for half a second before his eyes darted away and narrowed at some point over Keith’s shoulder. “What?” he said, and crossed his arms.

Keith’s heart maintained a steady beat in his chest; this was a moment of only truth. They didn’t have time for anything else, not when the other Paladins needed them back in the ball room, where danger could break out at any moment.

“Listen,” Keith said, determined to look Lance in the eye even if Lance refused to look at him, “I know you’re mad at me-”

He was cut off when Lance started laughing, though it didn’t sound anything at all like Lance’s normal, real laugh at all. Lance took a step back, letting his arms fall back to his sides. 

“Is that what this is going to be?” Lance said, the edge of his mouth twisting upward though his eyes were hard. He mimicked Keith, pitching his voice so low it might have been comical in any other situation. _“I know you’re mad at me because I made fun of your baby feelings, but we’ve got evil to fight, and Shiro and the others are in danger so accept my apology before I miss out on the shooting.”_

“I wasn’t going to say that,” Keith shot back, frowning, though a tiny part of him sparked with shame because it _was_ what he had just been thinking.

“Oh, really?” Lance said. He rolled his eyes. His clothes shimmered and shifted with his movement, reflecting the same blue of his eyes. If Keith wasn’t so focused on what he had come here to do, he imagined it might be easy to get derailed by how utterly stunning Lance looked right now. But he wouldn’t. “Did you come here to gloat first? Is _that_ it?”

The question was so surprising that it brought Keith back to his senses. “What? Gloat about _what?”_

“About the fact that you were right!” Lance said, throwing his hands up. An angry red was spreading beneath the blue glimmering high on his cheeks. “About the fact that Zonia was tricking me, and using me, and I could have gotten us all killed because I’m a self-loving _flirt!_ ”

His last word bounced off the glass, throwing itself back at them from every angle. Keith’s tongue was stuck inside his mouth.

“And you used that against me, that morning,” Lance said, voice suddenly strained. His shoulders slumped. His eyes darted up to the ceiling. “And I thought- I thought maybe you-”

Lance broke off. He met Keith’s eyes and finally held his gaze, and the look Keith found there was dark and strained and filled with hurt.

Keith’s heart thudded so violently he was surprised that sound didn’t echo off the walls, too. _He’d_ done this to Lance. He should have been honest ages ago-

Lance looked away, and Keith noticed the way his hands tightened into fists at his sides, his formal clothes rippling like water as he shifted on his feet.

It was time to fix it. He opened his mouth to speak-

“It was stupid, obviously,” Lance said first, glaring at Keith’s shoes, blinking fast, then shifting his eyes up to the ceiling again. His face was growing steadily redder. “I should have known you wouldn’t be into that kind of thing.”

Keith blinked once. “What kind of thing?”

Lance looked to his left, face so red the blue stood out boldly in stark contrast, nearing on purple. He threw his hands up in the air. “I don’t know! Romance! Relationships! Me!”

Keith’s mouth went dry.

It was appalling, he thought blindly, that this boy dressed in watercolor blues and shimmering like the hidden side of a waterfall, who had sunlight in his smile and loyalty pouring from his heart, who was brave beyond measure and too smart for his own good and _still_ made Keith laugh at every turn, could possibly, _possibly_ think Keith wouldn’t be into him.

Lance looked back at Keith, resignation written on every corner of his face, eyes rimmed red and shining. 

“Well,” Lance said, turning away and wiping carefully at his eyes. “Even if this _is_ the most humiliating moment of my life, I’m not going to let it ruin the most amazing makeup job this side of Lumior.” He laughed, but it sounded strained and cut off jerkily.

All at once, Keith unfroze.

“No-” he said, taking a half step forward. His heart pounded wildly against his ribcage. “No- I- Lance, you’re wrong.” 

Lance looked at him, makeup still perfectly intact, eyes gleaming wetly. The sun illuminated the teardrop gems in his hair and tinged his brown hair a brilliant auburn. The scarf around his neck sparkled, skin golden, cheeks glittering, and he looked so terribly beautiful and sad.

The longing in Keith’s chest was so intense it burned, as if the space inside of him was too small to contain it all, squeezing between his organs.

There would never be anyone but Lance. No matter how many planets or galaxies, universes or dimensions he traveled to – there would never be anyone else.

Lance blinked, eyelashes sticking slightly. “What do you mean?”

Maybe Keith wasn’t so into romance or relationships as abstract concepts, but he _was_ into Lance, and with Lance attached to them there was nothing he wanted more.

“I-” Keith took a breath. He met Lance’s eyes. Pink shadows slated across his face, the glass walls shimmering behind him into a blur. 

Patience. Calm. Focus. 

Blue.

“I think I’m in love with you.”

The words settled gently in the air, the quiet of the room wrapping around each syllable.

Lance stood completely still.

Keith stopped breathing.

Dust swirled between them in pinks and golds.

Lance’s eyes flickered away.

“You said-” Lance started, voice stilted. He swallowed. “You – you said you were _joking.”_

Keith could hear his own breath escape his chest. “I wasn’t.” He pressed his lips together.

Lance looked at him, eyes blinking, as if he was trying to see Keith clearly. “You weren’t joking,” he said faintly.

Keith shook his head.

“Then why- ” Lance started, furrowing his eyebrows, staring at him. “Why did you make me think-” He broke off, blinking again, as if he couldn’t comprehend this turn of events.

Keith’s heart started back up thumping in his chest. He could feel heat spreading over his face. “You assumed,” he said. “You took it as a joke, and I couldn’t-”

“The second time, then,” Lance said, his own face beginning to flush red beneath his makeup again. “I asked you to your face, and you said it was a joke.”

“I….” he said, swallowing. He let out a breath and looked at Lance. “I was afraid.”

“Afraid,” Lance repeated.

Keith nodded, the heat on his face spreading into a small fire. “Yes. It happens.”

Lance snorted, but it sounded more self-deprecating than amused. “I was falling over myself for you like an idiot, and you were _afraid_ of me rejecting you _._ ”

Keith felt his face burn hotter. “I’m not joking, Lance.”

Lance snorted again, but his eyes flashed. “Are you _sure_ about that?”

A volatile mixture of hurt and anger shot its way up from Keith’s chest to his throat, but he clamped down on his tongue. He really, _really_ didn’t want to fight right now.

“I didn’t know you felt… that way,” he said, instead settling on the truth. “Or at least – I wasn’t sure.”

His tone seemed to sober Lance, who redirected his eyes at the ground, narrowed slightly. He took a breath, and said, quietly, “Then why’d you say you really liked me in the first place?”

“You were being nice,” Keith said, and flushed again as Lance looked back up at him, frowning. “I mean, it just- slipped out.”

Lance stared at him. “Keith,” he said, an edge of disbelief in his voice. “I gave you a cup of _oil_ to drink. I’ve literally saved your life on missions, and you nearly choke on a cup of _cooking oil_ – and that’s what did it?”

The warmth of Keith’s face crawled down his neck; he wanted to take this jacket off. When Lance put it like _that_ it sounded stupid. “I was tired,” he said, unable to keep the hint of defensiveness out of his voice. “I’d just woken up. I wasn’t thinking straight.”

Lance looked away again, shadows stretching across his face. “Flattering,” he muttered.

Keith suddenly felt tethered to the very end of his rope and it was about to snap. “Lance, I’m not trying to- I’m telling you the truth,” he said, forcing out the words. “I’m not trying to insult you. I don’t want to fight.” His fingers had been curled tightly into fists for so long they were starting to ache. “Whatever. I’m sorry I said it at the worst possible moment. I’m not good at this stuff- clearly. But I meant it. I didn’t know it was April Fool’s Day. I-” His breath caught in his throat. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry I hurt you. I never meant to hurt you. I thought you were just being nice and you’d been – acting that way, lately, with me, and my mind was going insane- I didn’t mean to interpret everything wrong.” He stared hard at a point on Lance’s shoulder.

The space of a beat passed.

Lance’s voice was a higher pitch than usual when he said, meekly, “Oh.” 

“Yeah,” Keith said when Lance didn’t say anything else. He crossed his arms. “That’s- what it is.”

“Oh,” Lance said again. His face was bright red.

It felt- better, to have finally said it all. But an unease crept up on Keith as Lance didn’t say anything else, silence stretching.

Lance glanced up at him again. He tugged on the sleeve of his wrist, then raised his hand to scratch the back of his neck. He licked his lips, then bit his bottom one.

The silence persisted. Keith said nothing.

“Well,” Lance finally said, as if he couldn’t stand the silence any longer. “You did say ‘I think,’ which doesn’t mean you _know_ , so – so –”

“Lance,” Keith said, and Lance clamped his lips shut, eyes wide. “I know.”

The last words came out softer than he intended, and Lance’s entire face turned as red as Keith’s jacket.

“Oh,” Lance said a third time, voice faint.

Keith’s entire body felt like it was burning inside his clothes.

“Well,” he said when Lance didn’t say anything else, his heart beating with the newfound need to escape as the silence became unbearable. “If we’re done here-”

He began to walk past Lance, back the direction they came, but Lance’s hand shot out and caught his arm. “Wait, Keith-”

Keith turned and looked into Lance’s face, and he was so beautiful up close, the blue paint on his face glittering, his skin nearly glowing in the soft light.

“Keith,” Lance said. He took a deep breath, hand tight on Keith’s arm. A blush crept over the bridge of his nose. “I-”

Something moved out of the corner of Keith’s eye.

The thing about buildings made entirely out of glass, Keith realized in the space of half a second, was that they made it difficult to perform a sneak attack.

The other thing about glass buildings, Keith was reminded as he saw the first laser bullets coming toward them, was that they weren’t difficult to break.

“Lance, get down!” He shoved Lance to the ground without another thought, landing half on top of him and pulling his bayard out just as first laser pierced the glass wall to his right. Cracks spidered their way across half the wall.

 _We don’t have our shields,_ Keith thought wildly, cursing their formal clothes for the trillionth time that night, only really meaning it this time. Another laser zoomed over their heads through the cracked wall.

“Lance, get your bayard,” he said.

“Way ahead of you,” said Lance, pushing himself up into a kneeling position, his gun at the ready. As another shot from the enemy’s gun pierced the glass, Lance’s own shot deflected it halfway, meeting it in the middle.

“Nice!” Keith said.

Lance grinned into his viewfinder- and then his face fell, eyes widening. “Uh, Keith-”

Fifteen, maybe twenty, cloaked Lumite rebels were heading toward them, guns and knives in hand. Keith glanced around. The only entrance – and exit - was through the door on the wall they were shooting through.

“Lance,” Keith said as he ducked beneath another bullet and Lance shot a round back, “we need a plan.”

“You _think_?” Lance said, pressing the trigger again and again. More cracks appeared along the glass wall as his lasers beat against it.

He glanced at the wall to Lance’s left, where the sun had nearly set outside, the rest of the glass city stretching to the horizon. He looked down at his sword, useless against the bullets.

“When I count to three,” he said over the sound of the gunshots, “I’m going to throw my bayard at that wall, and I need you to shoot at the glass as it hits.”

“And take it off these guys?” Lance shouted back.

“We need an escape!”

Lance didn’t glance up. “Alright, alright, count to three!”

Keith re-gripped his bayard in his hand. “One,” he said.

Lance didn’t stop shooting at the rebels. Several were gaining ground, nearly at the door.

“Two-”

Two laser bullets just nearly reached them through the glass before Lance met them both with shots of his own. One Lumite threw her knife. A chunk of the wall shattered.

“Three!”

Keith hurled his bayard as hard as he could at the glass leading to their freedom, and at the very last moment, Lance turned and shot the wall at the exact instant Keith’s sword pierced it. His bayard had made a sizable hole. A few more shots from Lance and they may fit through it. They’d have to.

But now Keith didn’t have his sword, just the protection of the paper-thin clothes on his back. He was utterly defenseless.

“Lance, hurry!” he said.

“I’m trying!” Lance said, shooting and shooting and shooting, but the rebels were gaining on them, one had reached the door, was walking towards them, shield blocking Lance’s bullets-

“And I thought you were supposed to be guarding the ball,” said a familiar voice. “Making the rest of your Paladins do the dirty work? Too bad they’re probably dead by now. Certainly the Black Paladin is. Soon we’ll have his lion for Zarkon.”

Raw terror spun through Keith, turning his blood cold.

“You’re lying!” Lance yelled. He let a barrage of bullets fly at the figure, pounding on his shield that was very much _not_ made of glass, as the figure raised his knife into the air.

He threw it just as his hood fell back. Solire.

Keith could see it happen before it did.

“ _LANCE,”_ he shouted, terror turning into flame as his instincts took over.

He leapt forward, knocking Lance’s bayard from his hands, and shoved him to the ground before a sharp burst of pain struck his right shoulder like a bolt of lightning.

He gasped, fingers tightening around Lance. Actual, real fire was pouring its way into his skin and spreading.

“Keith-” Lance said, twisting around for his bayard. Keith slipped off of him, and he only got a glimpse long enough to see Lance’s face going white. “KEITH!”

Keith’s skin felt as if it was turning itself inside out, like his shoulder was on actual, literal fire. A short cry escaped his clenched teeth, his vision spotting.

 _“Keith- Keith- ”_ Lance’s voice sounded miles away, everything around him at a sudden distance.

Another jolt of pain twisted through his body, and Lance called his name again.

“ _Please,”_ Keith said, and he was begging for it to stop, to _stop,_ because no one was above begging for this-

“Oh no, oh god, oh god, _Keith-”_

The blood in his veins was rapidly turning to molten lava. 

“I can’t, Keith, I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” Lance was saying, because Keith must have been asking something. His voice was on the edge of tears again. “I can’t take the knife out, I have to keep fighting, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, you’ll bleed out, there’s already so much blood-”

“It doesn’t matter,” Solire’s voice rang out from somewhere nearby. “That knife was infected with poison, anyway.”

Keith’s head whirled amidst the fire. _Poison, he was poisoned-_

“No,” Lance’s voice said, suddenly low, and steady and lethal. _“NO!”_

The last came out in a scream between teeth, and then all Keith heard was lasers. The fire had reached Keith’s fingertips, white hot, and he could hear himself whimpering against the glass floor but he didn’t care.

“You against all of us?” Solire was saying, a touch of amusement in his voice. “You’re no match, Blue Paladin. Shoot him- keeping shooting him!”

“N- no-” Keith tried to say, mouth numb and slick against the floor.

“NO!” Lance yelled again, and the barrage of bullets grew even more frenzied. “Stay _away!_ You’re not getting him, _you’re not getting any of us!”_

Beads of sweat were sliding down the back of Keith’s neck, face hot and wet against the glass floor. The fire was evening out, the edges of his limbs fading to numbness. He wanted to fight it, he wanted to welcome it.

It didn’t stop him from hearing the enormous, high pitched shriek of glass from the top of the wall between them and the rebels.

“Wait!” Solire shouted, a new note of barely contained panic in his voice. “Wait- stop shooting, _stop shooting at them_ \- the infrastructure of the building is compromised!” 

_Lance,_ Keith tried to say, but his mouth was no longer connected to his brain. _We need to get out of here._

Then the sound of shattering, glass piercing glass.

“It is going to collapse! Cease fire! _Cease fire!”_

It was deafening around Keith’s ears, breaking and shattering and shrieking and lasers, and Keith couldn’t see, Keith couldn’t move, everything was white, they needed to get out-

Hands yanked him up.

“Keith, please, you can’t abandon me now,” Lance was saying, his voice straining against the sound of glass. “ _Please_ , Keith-”

 _Not abandoning you,_ Keith thought senselessly. _Never abandon you._

“Keith- come on, _Keith-”_

The shattering eclipsed Lance’s voice, and Keith knew nothing more.

 

*

 

A pressure on his shoulder and a powerful starburst of pain – and Keith opened his eyes.

“No!” he gasped out, throwing out his arms. He gasped as another jab of pain shocked his shoulder blades.

“Keith!” Lance’s voice said, and Keith felt a pair of hands touch his arm. “Don’t move!”

Keith blinked, chest heaving, as his eyes soaked in the dusky purple sky overhead. He realized he was outside and he was laying on hard, cool ground.

In the distance he heard yelling.

“Where are we?” he choked out. His entire body felt raw, misused.

“Not too far from the palace,” Lance said, but he sounded distracted. Keith had enough strength to turn his head.

He gasped.

Lance face was covered in splotches of blood, his clothes torn to shreds and scarlet splatters, his hands wet and shiny and red-

“Lance-”

“I’m fine,” Lance said quickly, meeting his eyes, his own wide and strained. His blue makeup was smeared across his face, a terrible purple. “I swear. It was- hard to get you out of there neatly.”

It was _his_ blood, Keith realized, eyes falling back to Lance’s red, glistening hands.

“The knife fell out as I was escaping through that hole we shot in the wall, I’m sorry, Keith, you won’t- you won’t stop bleeding.” Lance’s voice sounded frenzied, hands hovering over Keith’s body, unsure where to go, where to touch, how to help. “I have to get you back to the Castle, but I don’t know where everyone else is, or if it’s safe, if-” The sound of shattering glass sounded in the distance, and a burst of screams.

 _Shiro,_ Keith thought. _Hunk, Pidge-_

He tried to push himself up, but his vision nearly whited out again.

“ _What are you doing?_ ” Lance yelped, pressing a hand on his chest. Keith coughed. Pain radiated down the length of his right side.

“The others-” he gasped.

“You’re _injured,”_ Lance said. His eyes were impossibly wide. “I tied up your shoulder but you’re still bleeding, Keith, I didn’t think you’d even wake up again!” His voice bordered on hysterical.

Keith listened to the sound of his own hard breathing. Hadn’t Solire said the knife was poisoned? He thought of the fire burning through him before.

“You were poisoned,” he said, gaze finding Lance’s again, whose eyes hadn’t left him. His hand was on Keith’s wrist, gripping it tightly. “When you got stabbed a few days ago. The pod saved you.”

“I know,” Lance said, his hand tightening around Keith’s wrist. “That’s why I need to get you to one _right now,_ so I need you to stay still so I can-”

“But it didn’t affect you like it affected me,” Keith said.

Lance blinked. “No,” he said, and he took his hand from Keith’s wrist and ran it over his own face, running blood and makeup down to his chin. He reached forward, fingers hovering over the fringe of Keith’s hair, and paused. Then, gently, barely touching Keith’s skin, he pushed it back from his forehead. His hand shook.

Glass shattered in the distance. More screams.

Lance froze, and then his hand curled into a fist. His eyes narrowed.

“I’m getting you back to the Castle,” he said, and gently, he eased his hand beneath Keith’s head. He looked down at him. “Just- trust me, okay?”

“I do,” Keith said, flinching slightly at the way the movement from Lance’s arm sent a new shock of pain through his shoulder.

A tiny smile flitted across Lance’s face before he furrowed his brow again. “Oh, and try not to black out, okay?”

“Okay.”

Lance began to prop him upward – and Keith’s vision tunneled to black before he was even off the ground.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have some work to do on the last part....but it shall be coming soooon!


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Keith wakes up and Lance is distressed.

The next time Keith opened his eyes, he was stepping out of a healing pod.

A pair of strong arms caught him before his legs gave out beneath him, warm against his frigid skin.

“Steady there, Keith.”

As his eyes came into focus, Keith began to recognize who was keeping him upright. He blinked. “C-Coran?”

“The one and only.” He winked. “Have a nice stay in the pod?”

“Wha-” Keith started, blinking rapidly. His mind swam, disoriented and groggy, unable to grasp a coherent thought. It was dark through the windows, and suddenly he felt boxed in, unable to determine where or when they were. Unease seeped into him.

“Where- where is everyone?” His eyes darted around the room, catching on another pod, and his blood ran cold. “Pidge-”

Pidge lay still and upright in a healing pod beside his own. There was a bloody gash in her stomach.

“She’ll be okay,” said Coran, and Keith looked back at him. There were tired circles beneath his eyes, and he looked distinctly rumpled. “A light stab wound.”

“ _Light?_ ” Keith asked, trying to grasp his memories, but they wouldn’t stop spinning around his brain- glass shattering, screams,

He grabbed Coran’s arm, swaying slightly. “Is- is Lance- Shiro- Hunk-?”

Coran patted his arm. “Lance is fine, and so are Shiro and Hunk and Allura. Everyone is here in the Castle, recovering.”

Relief so strong washed over Keith that he physically felt his muscles relax, skin tingling with relief. Lance was alright, and so was Shiro, and Pidge would be okay, Hunk and Allura were okay, everyone was okay.

His eyes caught sight of another pod. He froze.

“Coran- why-”

“Ah,” Coran said, as if Keith had pointed out a mere curiosity. “Yes. That will all be explained later.”

Keith’s heart was pounding in his chest, mind swirling and disoriented by the darkness out the windows and the silence of the pods and the fact that Pidge was in one and the Lumite girl who tried to attack Lance at the ball was in another.

“No need to worry,” Coran was saying. “She’s not an enemy. Everyone’s fine. I just sent Lance away not too long ago, actually. He might have slept right on the floor between you and Pidge if I didn’t make him go to his own bed.”

Keith felt another wave of relief wash over him at the thought of Lance doing such a thing. Lance had been _here,_ he was in the Castle, he was alive and he’d gotten them both back safely.

Keith’s head spun with emotional whiplash.

“The fight- the rebels, what happened? Why is she here?” Keith asked. He tried to see beyond the dark window. “Are we still on Lumior?”

Coran sighed. “The Lumite royalty _were_ the rebels,” he said. “That really was the queen that tried to stab Shiro that first night. They were working with the Galra, in fact, and were trying to infiltrate us by inviting us into their palace and into their ranks. But we are not to be outsmarted!” A gleam of victory shone in Coran’s eye.

Keith opened his mouth to ask more questions, but Coran held up a finger.

“No more questions, you need to rest,” said Coran. “Zonia is here because she helped us. And yes, we’re still on Lumior. We’re not going to abandon this city and leave all the innocent Lumites to clean it up. If you want to help, you need to rest.”

“But-”

“Nope.”

“Coran-”

“Nuh uh.”

“But you-”

“More answers tomorrow!” Coran said, and steered him by the shoulders toward the door. There was no pain in his right shoulder, Keith registered distantly.

“No stopping for any visits on your way to your room,” said Coran. “Though I must say they may be spooked to see you at their door, we didn’t expect you out of that pod for a few days at least! Longer than Pidge, at any rate. She had not been poisoned.”

“How long was I in there?” Keith asked.

“Just a tick over a day,” said Coran. “Your shoulder wound was a bit of a nasty one, I’m afraid. A major artery had been severed in your neck. It was lucky that Lance got you here when he did.” His brow furrowed. “But…there was something strange in your system that I believe cured you of the poison before you even reached the pod.”

Keith blinked. “What?”

“It was a large quantity of boiling oil,” Coran said. “I believe Hunk uses it in his cooking, it’s a very strong disinfectant against poisons. It burned the poison right out of your body. Did you have some sort of disastrous late night snack?”

“No,” Keith said, mouth suddenly dry.

“Well, however it got there, I do believe it saved your life,” said Coran. “Lance got you here quickly enough to save you from your physical wound, but the poison would have killed you much more quickly if it wasn’t for that oil.” Coran’s eyes, though serious, softened. “It must have been an excruciatingly painful chemical reaction that took place in your body.”

“It- it was,” said Keith, heart thudding in his chest.

Coran patted him on the shoulder again. “I’m sorry that happened to you, Keith,” he said. “Now go get some rest.”

Keith felt as if he was floating through the hallways, exhaustion overcoming his senses now that that the adrenaline from the stress and relief had waned. He considered stopping at Shiro’s door and demanding to know everything, about the fight and about why the girl was here, but by the time he was halfway to his room, he could barely stand upright.

He almost stopped at Lance’s, too, but Lance deserved the sleep. 

He stumbled into his room, ready to collapse on the bed, and he nearly did, but he forced himself to proceed to the bathroom. His mouth tasted fuzzy with chemicals and whatever he had eaten last, an entire day ago.

The light flicked on as he walked into his tiny bathroom, and the face of the person he met in the mirror was the version of himself that had come out of the Marmora trials, except worse.

His skin was deathly pale, probably from all the blood loss, and his eyes were sunken and shadowed purple.

But that was nothing compared to all the blood.

He was covered in it. His red, fiery formal clothes, which he hadn’t even realized he was still in, were stained with huge dark splotches. His hair was matted and dirty, sparkles still there yet faded- but it appeared that someone had taken the care to wipe his face clean.

He remembered Lance’s hand brushing his hair back, fingers feather-light.

His eyes fell to his right shoulder, the source of all the blood, matted and dried with layers of it. Some strip of dark fabric was tied around his shoulder to staunch the wound.

He looked away from his reflection and down at it, blinking slowly. Purple, he thought. And then, the smallest spot where it was tied beneath his arm- blue.

Keith’s breath hitched, and reached up to tug it off.

It was nearly solid with dried blood as he slipped it from his shoulder, tied impossibly tight with double, triple, quadruple knots. He flipped on his sink and thrust it under the water, fingers digging at the knot.

The water immediately turned scarlet. It escaped in a swirl down the drain.

He grabbed an entire bar of soap and scrubbed at it, his fingers turning pink. The purple was fading, slightly.  The water began to steam, fogging his eyes.

When the water finally ran clear, the scarf was not the blue it had been, and he still couldn’t undo the knot.

Keith rubbed at his face with the crook of his elbow, and when he looked up into the mirror again, his eyes were smeared with red. He realized it hadn’t been only the steam fogging his eyes.

He looked back at the scarf. He’d probably damaged the material, scrubbing it so hard with ten thousand year old hand soup in boiling water. It hung limply in his hands, dripping.

Keith’s breath had shortened, his heart thumping painfully in his chest, eyes still stinging. He didn’t know why he was reacting this way.

 _You’re exhausted_ , he told himself. _Go to bed._

So he did.

He walked out of the bathroom in his filthy, bloody clothes and fell back on his bed.

He was asleep within seconds, Lance’s ruined scarf clutched to his chest.

 

*

 

Keith awoke to a soft knocking on his door.

The doors whooshed open and closed before he could crack his eyes open, and when he did, his vision still blurred, he saw no one standing there.

He sat up, head spinning.

There was a squeak.

Keith looked down, blinking his vision into clarity again. The mice stood on the floor at the edge of his bed.

“Um,” Keith said. His voice scratched.

They stared at him – four against one – before they erupted into squeaks, consulting one another. The tiny blue one vehemently shook her head while the pink one nodded vigorously in retaliation.  The other two seemed to waver in the middle, the tall one glancing back at Keith every few seconds, uncertain.

They fell silent abruptly and all turned back to look at Keith. The pink one squeaked at him.

They waited.

“Uh,” Keith said. “Yes?” 

They erupted into squeaks again, then dashed for the door. It opened to let them out, then swished closed again.

Keith blinked once. “Wait-” he said.

It was too late, and a moment later the doors whooshed back open and four bodies toppled into his room.

“Ow, Lance, that’s my arm-”

“Sorry, Hunk-”

An intake of breath cut them off, and four pairs of eyes fell on Keith’s face.

The silence was static in Keith’s ears, his vision still slightly fuzzy. His heart beat once, twice, three times-

“Oh, _Keith_ ,” Allura said finally, bringing her hands to her mouth. A line formed between Shiro’s eyebrows and Hunk’s eyes widened. Lance looked stricken.

Keith resisted the urge to pull his bedsheets over himself. The looks on their faces made him feel slightly sick to his stomach and he wasn’t quite sure why.

“I- didn’t get a chance to shower last night,” he said quickly, averting his eyes from each of their gazes. His tongue clicked sticky and dry against the roof of his mouth. All at once he realized how disgusting he felt, beneath a coat of dried blood, grime, and grease. His skin felt stiff, his mouth tasted awful again. A slight nausea rolled in his stomach and a vague headache clung to his temple.

“Dude,” Hunk said, “what happened to your eyes?”

Hastily, Keith reached up and touched the skin around his eyes, the previous night coming back to him in a wave of hot humiliation. Were his eyes swollen? Could they tell he’d been-?

“You’ve got blood streaked across your face,” Shiro supplied helpfully.

“Oh,” Keith said, dropping his hand. His mind flashed again back to the scene from the night before, but he didn’t know how to explain, didn’t _want_ to explain, so he said nothing.

His eyes found Lance again. His gaze had fallen to Keith’s lap, staring.

Keith looked down. He realized he was still holding the scarf, wrinkled and purple, clutched in his hand. He looked back up, unsure of what to do with it, feeling raw and exposed. Lance looked up, eyes wide, and met his before they jerked to some point on the wall behind him. Humiliation grew taut in Keith’s chest.

“Uh,” he heard Hunk whisper, “guys, maybe we shouldn’t have bombarded Keith like this.”

“The mice said they’d asked him if he’d mind, and he’d said no,” Allura whispered back.

“Yeah, but does Keith speak mouse?”

“I can hear you guys, you know,” Keith said, because this was getting stupid and he didn’t care to hear them talk about him right in front of his face. His head was beginning to throb.

Hunk and Allura both went red, but Shiro took a step forward. He had a few angry cuts on his face, but other than that, he looked perfectly fine, if a bit dark-eyed.

“We wanted to see if you were okay,” Shiro said, voice steady. “We were worried about you.”

“I’m fine,” Keith said.

“Dude,” said Hunk. “I didn’t even know it was possible for one person to bleed so much.” 

Lance’s eyes stared hard at the wall behind Keith, his body perfectly still. His face had paled. His face, too, was covered in angry scrapes, even more than Shiro’s.

“I’m fine,” Keith said again, even though he clearly wasn’t. He was probably dehydrated. He shifted his eyes from the floor up to Shiro again, temple pulsing. “What happened? Why was that- girl in one of the healing pods? Coran said the royals were posing as the rebels to infiltrate us.”

Allura stepped forward. “Keith, maybe-”

His eyes met hers. “I’m _fine_ ,” he again. His hands curled tightly around the fabric of Lance’s scarf. “Now tell me what happened. Please.” He looked to Shiro again, trying to temper the frustration he could feel building beneath his skin.

Shiro’s brows furrowed slightly, his face settling as he looked at Keith. He nodded. “What Coran told you was right. The rebels were the royals all along.”

“But there _were_ some real rebels in the royals,” Hunk said. “They were just a lot better at hiding.”

Keith frowned.

“Lance’s friend,” Shiro said. “Zonia. The girl in the pod. You thought she was going to attack him at the ball,” he clarified.

An unease began to creep up on Keith.

“She wasn’t going to attack him,” said Shiro. “She was going to warn him. The little disk that Solire claimed was a weapon was Galra information.”

“It was a holographic letter,” said Hunk. “Zonia detonated it and it revealed a holograph of the Galra telling the Lumite queen and her subjects to pose as rebels. The Galra told them to lure us here for help. They wanted the Lumites to- make Shiro their target and get the Black Lion.”

Keith’s unease began to accumulate into a chill on the back of his neck.

“I think it’s why Solire didn’t want anyone to touch the disk,” said Shiro. “He knew what it was. He didn’t want it in our hands.”

“He also didn’t seem to think she’d have the guts to start playing it right there,” Allura said, smirking slightly.

“How’d she get it in the first place?” Keith asked. The chill was spreading down his spine. He didn’t match Allura’s smile.

Allura shook her head. “We haven’t gotten a chance to ask her yet. She was trying to give it to Lance. She was trying to warn us. She was injured in the fighting.”

The chill wrapped itself around Keith’s chest. He felt ill.

“I stopped her,” he said faintly. The room was blurring around the edges.

“Keith, you were looking out for your teammate,” Allura said gently.

He hadn’t been, though. He had been watching Lance obsessively because he’d been jealous. _That_ was the reason, not because of anything heroic. He hadn’t been watching _Shiro_ that closely, and he was the target. And now look what he’d done. The nausea in his stomach intensified. 

“Keith, you did the right- Keith?” 

His vision was swaying, his mind full of static. “I’m fine,” he said again, an automatic response, but his own voice sounded distant, and the nausea in his stomach was working its way up his throat-

“Keith! Keith, head between your knees, Keith.”

There were gentle hands on his shoulders, Allura’s voice in his ear, Hunk’s from somewhere above him. Keith knew he should be embarrassed but the nausea rolling through him and the chill crawling over his skin made embarrassment seem like a vague concept.

“-need to rest.”

Keith shook his head, enough of his senses returning to realize it was wedged between his knees.

“Yes,” said Shiro’s voice, firm and gentle. “You lost a lot of blood, Keith.”

“What’s the good of a healing pod if I’m not fully healed?” Keith mumbled to the floor.

“Technically, you are,” said Allura, and Keith felt her squeeze his shoulder. “The pod just registers your vital levels quicker than your body does. You need rest.”

Keith didn’t know what that meant, but he didn’t really care.

He lifted his head. Lance was staring at him, face pale, from behind Shiro and Hunk, eyes wide. Keith’s stomach twisted with very real embarrassment this time, frustration twisting inside him for letting his body take over like that. He looked away.

“I’m fine,” he said when Allura didn’t let go of him. His tongue felt stale and sticky.

“Dude, saying that doesn’t necessarily make it true,” said Hunk.

Keith felt another stab of annoyance even as leftover nausea clung to his stomach. “It doesn’t matter. It’s my fault this all happened. I stopped her. This could have all been avoided, so yeah, I suppose it’s _not_ fine.”

“It’s not your fault, Keith,” said Shiro. He knelt down in front of him. “You were doing what you thought was best to protect your teammate. You had no reason to trust her.”

Keith looked away. He glared at his pillow, chest tight.

“You can talk to her when she comes out,” said Shiro. “We’re hoping she’ll explain everything to us in more detail.”

Keith didn’t particularly want to talk to her. His cold sweat turned warm as his skin returned to its normal temperature.

“Keith, we’ll explain more later, but you need to rest,” said Shiro. He patted his knee.

“But how did the fight-”

“It broke out after the hologram was played,” said Shiro. “The charade had been given away and the royals went full force on us, but it was bound to happen at some point that night. That’s why they’d gathered us there. It wasn’t your fault, Keith.”

“But,” Keith said, “if Lance and I hadn’t been separated from the rest of you-”

“It would have still been a fight,” Hunk said with a shrug.

Maybe that was true, but still, Keith felt that so much could have been saved. The rest of them wouldn’t have had to fight without him and Lance. Pidge might not have been hurt. If he hadn’t interfered with Lance and Zonia, they would have had a head start on the fight. It could have been _prevented_.

“Rest, Keith,” said Shiro, as if he could hear the thoughts running through Keith’s mind, and he reached up and squeezed his shoulder. 

“And maybe take a shower,” said Allura. “That should make you feel better.”

But Keith didn’t _want_ to feel better, he wanted to know exactly what had happened, what the Galra had said on that disk, what had happened to the queen and the rest of the royals working for them, and what was going to happen now.

“Do you need help?” Hunk asked, kindly. Embarrassment twisted in Keith’s stomach again. That was the last thing he wanted, one of them making sure he knew how to get into the shower without passing out. He shook his head.

“No, but-”

“No, Keith.”

“But-”

“No.”

“Shiro-”

“Keith.”

“Allura-”

“Sorry, Keith.”

Keith breathed out through his nose. His fingers gripped the scarf in his lap so hard his knuckles had gone white. 

“Get some rest.”

“I don’t _want-”_

But the doors were already whooshing open, and Allura had let go of his shoulder. They were _walking out on him._ Keith stared, quiet fury building beneath his skin. He _deserved to know-_

His eyes caught on Lance, following Hunk out the door. As if he could feel Keith’s gaze, he paused on the threshold. By the tense line of his shoulders, Keith could tell he was hesitating.

Keith’s fury suddenly stiffened into a bundle of nerves so tight it felt like a rope squeezing around his neck, contracting with every second Lance stood there, not moving forward, but not looking back, either.

Keith wasn’t sure which one he wanted.

Their conversation in the glass room before it had come crashing down on them had not been forgotten, not at all- what he’d said, what Lance had been _about_ to say - it was there in the back of his mind, constant through all of this, a thin veil of hope-

Lance took a step forward, shoulders falling slightly, and then another, and then the door _whooshed_ shut behind his back.

Something hot and disappointed and mortified flashed through him, and Keith sucked in a small breath. Lance hadn’t said a single word, and if he didn’t want to talk about it-

Whatever. He ran a hand over his face, his bloody face, and dropped the scarf onto his bed. He didn’t want to think about it. He wanted to erase the last few days and start over.

 _Up,_ he told himself, and pushed himself to his feet. It didn’t matter what he wanted, obviously. _Obviously._ He scrubbed another hand over his face, shaking the dizziness from his head. He started for the bathroom.

He was just about to attempt peeling off his clothes when the doors whooshed open again without a knock. He turned around, scowling. “Hey-”

His voice cut off in his throat. Lance stood in his doorway, looking at him, face pale and jacket hanging off of his thin shoulders.

Keith’s heart kicked back into high-gear.

“I-” Lance said, taking a step into the room. Then he took a step _back_ , and Keith was so tired of his emotions being yo-yoed back and forth he almost opened his mouth to tell him to just _stop_ , _please_ when Lance said, holding a hand up, “Wait a sec, okay? I’ll be right back.”

The doors whooshed shut again, and he was gone.

The part of Keith strung with petulant annoyance told him to _just go shower, why should you let him boss you around?_

The other part of him, the part of him on the verge of a hopeful, delirious mental collapse, said _wait for him._

Keith fell back on his bed, hard, and let out a long sigh.

 

*

 

Lance came back ten minutes later.

“Oh, good,” he breathed at the sight of Keith sitting on his bed. He was panting slightly, like he’d run, and in his arms were two bulky items. “I was afraid you might not listen to me. You haven’t eaten anything since coming out of that pod, have you?”

Keith shook his head. “No, but-”

Lance shoved a canteen into his hands. “You must be really dehydrated. When did you last eat before going _into_ the pod? Drink that.” He immediately busied himself with the other container. 

Keith looked down at the canteen in his hands. He uncapped it, and when the water hit his tongue it was as if his entire body suddenly remembered it needed sustenance. He drained the entire canteen without pausing to take a single breath.

When he lowered it, slightly breathless, Lance was standing in front of him with a bowl of food goo, watching him, his fingers tapping against the metal.

“Hunk hasn’t really had a chance to make anything fancier in the last few days,” Lance said as Keith took it, but Keith didn’t care. His stomach felt like an empty cavern waiting to be filled again.

“Thanks,” he said, and stuck a spoonful in his mouth. The lukewarm, slightly pasty flavor had never tasted like such a delicacy. Before he’d finished half the bowl, he could feel his mind becoming clearer.

He looked up. Lance still stood in front of him, fiddling with the empty canteen Keith had handed back to him, eyes flickering up to Keith’s face and away, and back. Keith caught his eye, and something warm and sinuous and anxious fluttered in his stomach, completely unrelated to food goo. “Thanks,” he said again, lowering his eyes back to his bowl and taking another bite. He swallowed. “For the food.”

Lance shrugged both of his shoulders. It came out in a jerky motion. “I didn’t- want you to pass out in the shower, or anything.”

Keith thought of how he’d nearly passed out not twenty minutes before, this time with a more embarrassing kind of clarity now that his mind wasn’t so foggy. He looked up to find Lance watching him again, eyes relentlessly blue. His stomach tightened.

He set his empty bowl down beside him. “Yeah, I should go- do that.”

“Yeah,” said Lance. He ran a hand through his hair. “Yeah, okay.”

Keith stood up, still a little shaky but feeling much, much better. As he grabbed some clean clothes, Lance gathered the bowl on his bed. When Keith turned back around, he got the feeling Lance was dawdling as he shuffled toward the door.

He said it before he really thought about it. “Lance.”

Lance looked up, eyes snapping to his face as his fingers clenched the bowl and canteen, like he’d been caught doing something he shouldn’t have.

“You can...you don’t have to leave.” Keith shrugged and looked away. “I’ll be out in a minute.” He met his eyes again.

Lance blinked, and his shoulders fell slightly in what might have been relief. “Oh. Okay. Yeah, I can- I’ll wait.”

“Okay,” said Keith. Then he turned around and slipped into his tiny bathroom and shut the door behind him.

He leaned back against cold metal and ran a hand over his face. “Get a grip,” he muttered to himself, and tried not to think about how Lance was on the other side of his bathroom door as he peeled off the bloodied remains of his ball clothes. He kicked them into a corner, reminding himself to burn them later.

 

*

 

When Keith stepped out of the bathroom in a fresh black t-shirt and a pair of clean jeans, he was quite positive he’d never felt cleaner in his entire life.

Lance was still there, waiting on his bed, but he stood up when Keith walked back into the room. He must have stepped out while Keith was in the shower, because the empty food goo bowl was gone and he handed Keith the canteen refilled with water.

“How do you feel?” Lance asked him, watching him as he took a drink.

Keith wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, recapped the canteen, and then fell back on his bed. He closed his eyes as his head hit the mattress. The ache in his temple had faded. “Like a million bucks,” he said.

Lance gave a startled laugh. “Now that’s something you don’t hear the Red Paladin of Voltron say every day.”

Keith let out a breath. “No.” 

He let himself keep his eyes closed for a moment longer, basking in the softness of his bed, then opened them again and pushed himself up.

Lance stood in the middle of the room, hands deep in the pockets of his jacket. Staring at him.

Keith felt a prickle along the back of his neck.

He curled his fingers into his bedsheets and bit down on the inside of his lip. They may as well get this over with.

He met Lance’s eyes again. He was still staring, like if he looked away, Keith might disappear. There were shadows beneath his eyes.

“At the palace,” he heard himself say without thinking, suddenly reminded of something that had bothered him, but he hadn’t realized exactly how much until this moment. “You wouldn’t- look at me.”

Lance’s eyes slid away immediately, another laugh bubbling out of him, only this time it carried an awkward lilt. He pulled one of his hands out of his pockets and rubbed the back of his neck. “Is that really where we want to start this conversation?”

Keith frowned. “What?”

Lance dropped his hand to his side, empty. “I mean,” he said, and met Keith’s eyes again, his own widening slightly. “We could talk about that fact that you’re like, not dead.” He swallowed, but he didn’t look away, gaze bordering on feverish, his tone clipped. “That seems pretty significant.”

“Oh yeah,” said Keith. He frowned. “Wait, yeah, how did you get back here, anyway?”

Lance looked away and took a deep breath. He ran a hand through his hair, gathering it into a fist on the back of his scalp and holding it for a moment. It was beginning to stick in every direction.

He looked back at Keith.

“It was pretty chaotic once I got to the main road,” he said. He began to pace. “Everyone was, you know, running away from the palace in their fancy ball gowns and screaming. Wasn’t hard to blend in. When I got to the Castle, though, there was a group of Lumite rebels – royals, I guess - trying to break in.”

Keith frowned.

“Pretty dumb of us, huh?” said Lance. “To leave the Castle empty when we knew _someone_ was trying to get to the Black Lion.” He frowned at the floor. “But you were- you were bleeding so much, and you were poisoned, I couldn’t-” He broke off. He shook his head and looked back up at Keith. “I couldn’t just wait around for the others to return, _if_ they were going to return.”

Keith imagined the scene. Lance, alone, not even in his armor, against a crowd of Lumites working for the Galra and Keith’s own body passed out cold in his arms, useless. 

“I didn’t know what else to do,” Lance said. “I thought of how the Red Lion had responded to you in the past. When you were in distress.”

“You called Red?” Keith said, surprised.

Lance shook his head and paused to look up at him, halting in his tracks. “I called Blue.”

Keith felt his eyebrows fly upward. “And she came?”

Lance shook his head again. He met his eyes. “Red came.”

Keith stared. “I- what? How?”

He thought of when he’d needed to save Shiro on that planet full of ravenous animals, when it had just been the two of them and all he’d had was the Black Lion to help him.

How desperate he’d been in that moment.

“Oh,” he said.

Lance laughed, a huff of disbelief. “I know, right? Well, she came, and I guess the Galra didn’t exactly prepare the Lumites for what our lions would be like in action because they scattered.” He paused. “To be fair, Red was pretty menacing in that moment.”

Keith felt himself smirk, just barely. “She can be.”

Lance caught his eye, like he knew what Keith was thinking. “Yeah.” His eyes slid back to the floor, a frown coming over his mouth, and he began to pace again. “Red got us inside pretty quickly, which was good, because I wasn’t- well, you weren’t looking so great.” He reached his hand up to touch his hair again. “You still had a pulse, but it was like- like all the blood was being drained out of you. Coran said the knife hit an artery near your neck, and if it had taken any longer to get you to a pod, you might’ve-” Lance broke off. He took a deep breath, but he continued to pace. “I’m going to have to go clean up Red’s interior in a little while. You don’t want to see it.”

Keith blinked, taking it all in. The thought of Lance, inside Red, cleaning up Keith’s blood-

Lance had gone pale, and he scrubbed at his face again with his hand as his chest rose and fell, eyes clenched. His pacing had sped up. He shook his head and his voice was slightly hoarse as he said, “Sorry, sorry, I-”

“Lance,” Keith said. He had the urge to reach his hand out but didn’t know what to do with it. “You should- you can sit.”

Lance opened his eyes and looked around, as if a chair was going to suddenly materialize out of thin air.

“Here,” Keith said, gesturing to the empty space beside him and scooting over a bit.

Lance hesitated, and for a fraction of a second Keith feared he may reject the offer, but then he crossed the room and the bed dipped down where he sat on its edge. A good few inches separated them.

“I’m sorry,” said Lance, running his hand over his face again. “I’m sorry, I’m being- this is embarrassing.”

“It’s fine,” Keith said quickly. His heart thumped loudly in his chest. If only he’d been _conscious,_ if only Lance hadn’t had to handle this all alone _-_

Lance made a small noise, something almost choked, startling Keith, and when he looked over he saw that Lance had the scarf in his hands. It had been sitting at the end of the bed.

Lance held it delicately in his hands, as if it might tear if he handled it roughly.

“I’m sorry,” Keith said quickly. “I tried to wash the blood out, but I only made it worse.”

Lance let out a strangled laugh, far more pained than amused. He looked up. “Dude, I don’t- are you really worried about that?” His voice was laced with disbelief. He clenched his shaking fingers around the scarf and held it to his chest. “You were _bleeding_ to death, Keith. Trying to stop it with a piece of fabric was the least I could do.”

“I-” Keith started, but he didn’t know what to say. He didn’t want Lance to be in pain over this.

“You were dying in my arms, Keith,” he said, and his voice shook slightly on his name. This up close, the shadows beneath his eyes looked nearly purple. “You were _dying.”_

“You saved me,” Keith said. His own hands were growing clammy in his lap.

“But if I hadn’t-” Lance’s breath hitched, eyes unexpectedly glossy, and Keith’s chest tightened around his lungs. “I’ll never be able to forget how- how bloody-”

“You _saved_ me, Lance,” Keith said, and he lifted one of his hands toward Lance without thinking. He caught himself, fingers hovering somewhere over Lance’s shoulder, and Lance stiffened.

Keith’s heart thumped against his ribcage, hand still in the air, inches from Lance’s jacket. _Touch him touch him touch him-_

Lance took another shaky breath. “I’m not entirely sure that everything you said before all the fighting broke out wasn’t part of some fever dream induced by the chemicals in my hair spray, but you should know,” he paused, and Keith held his breath, blood rushing in his ears.

Lance’s eyes flickered up to his again.

 _Please,_ Keith thought, just once, his mind static.

Then, unexpectedly, Lance smiled, and it was so uncertain and sweet that everything in Keith went quiet.

“I’m pretty much in love with you, too.” Lance ducked his eyes, cheeks flushing. “I mean, duh. I don’t know how you didn’t see it. My crush on you has been about the size of a galaxy for ages.”

Keith’s mind – his entire body - felt as if it was swimming; his veins were filled with light and his chest was a burning flame. Lance was in love with him, too. Lance had liked him for _ages._

Lance looked away when Keith said nothing, hands curling in his lap, and Keith didn’t hesitate any longer before he put his hand on his shoulder, heart beating in his chest because Lance _loved_ him, Lance had _saved his life_ , and Lance was haunted by visions of Keith’s blood, Lance had been afraid he would die, and Keith didn’t want him to be sad, ever, not because of anything.

Lance’s breath caught and he looked up at him, eyes suddenly red and glassy, and Keith’s heart dropped.

“Hey-” he said, and his own voice sounded rough to his ears. “Lance, hey, don’t be-”

Then Lance was against his chest, and Keith was wrapping both of his arms around him, and Lance’s head was buried into the space between his chin and his shoulder. His hands were gripping the back of Keith’s shirt, and his breaths were coming in quiet, terrible gasps.

Every thought and action flew from Keith’s mind except to wrap his arms around him, because what else could he do? Lance melted into him, and Keith felt warm tears beginning to seep through the fabric of his t-shirt.

“You were- dying,” Lance gasped slightly into his chest, voice muffled by Keith’s’ shirt.

“I’m okay,” Keith said into his hair. “I’m okay, I’m fine, you saved me, Lance. You saved my life.”

“I no idea what I was doing,” Lance said, his fingers curling slightly around Keith’s side. “I wouldn’t have gotten you to the pod if Red hadn’t come.”

“She wouldn’t have come if you- didn’t mean it,” Keith said.

Lance hummed something into his chest, going quiet. It seemed, at least, that he couldn’t argue with that.

Lance’s breathing finally calmed into something quiet and gentle, his body warm, and slowly, for the time being, Keith began to feel himself relax.  Lance was _here_ , pressed up against him, and he wasn’t going anywhere.

Lance pulled away slightly. He wiped his hand across his nose, eyes averted. “Sorry.”

“For what?” Keith said, curling his fists in the sudden empty space in his lap.

“For-” Lance gestured to himself, his rumpled hair, his red-rimmed eyes, his coat askew on his shoulders. He looked at Keith’s tearstained shirt and flushed slightly.

“Stop,” Keith said, grabbing his wrist. “You’re fine.”

Lance nodded. “Okay,” he said, though he didn’t look convinced. His eyes darted down to his wrist in Keith’s hands. Keith didn’t really know what to do with it, so he just kept his fingers wrapped around it. He felt Lance’s pulse jump.

Keith licked his lips. “I’m glad you’re here too, you know,” he said. “You could have just as easily- and I’d have had no way of doing anything.”

The corners of Lance’s mouth turned downward. “You jumped in the path of a knife for me, Keith. Don’t tell me you did nothing.”

“I know, but-”

“That knife probably would have killed me if you hadn’t taken it. And it almost _did_ kill you, so shut your quiznack.”

It had been heading straight for Lance’s chest, Keith recalled with terrible clarity. And even if that hadn’t done it, Lance would never have survived the poison.

Keith felt vaguely nauseous again. Boldly, carefully, he slid his fingers from around Lance’s wrist over Lance’s palm and into his grasp. He could feel Lance watching.

“I don’t think you’re using that word correctly,” he said quietly, looking back up.

Lance looked at him, then huffed a sudden laugh. His lips curved into a smile and ran his free hand over his face as if he was trying to hide it.

“You know,” Lance said after a moment, dropping his hand and looking back at Keith. “This is probably a dumb thing to admit, but I’ve imagined this scene in my head before, and none of those scenarios involved me crying on you after a near-death experience.”

“Really?” Keith said, unable to quirk his lips, involuntary pleasure lighting up inside him at the thought of Lance thinking about these things. “None of those involved you saving my life?”

“Well I didn’t say that,” said Lance. “I also didn’t say anything about _you_ not crying on _me.”_

Keith smiled and nudged him. “Well, I also hadn’t imagined getting interrupted by a shootout the last time.”

Lance laughed, but the brightness slowly faded from his eyes again. “I wish I hadn’t taken it as a joke the first time you said it.” He tightened his fingers around Keith’s. “I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay.”

“It could have saved so much trouble,” he said. “You thought I was doing something _nice_ for you, and even when it tasted awful- you still said it. I panicked, I didn’t think you’d ever- feel that way- it completely threw me off.”

“Lance-”

“That stuff was terrible, Keith, and then I _laughed_ at you.” Lance was beginning to look stricken again. “You told me you liked me and I laughed.”

“It was terrible timing,” Keith said quickly. “It was just as much my fault for not admitting I meant it. But Lance-”

“I never would have done that if I knew you meant it, I just couldn’t believe-”

“I _know,_ Lance,” said Keith, and without thinking, he brought the side of his hand to Lance’s face. “Listen to me.”

Lance fell silent.

“Before the shootout, you said I should have admitted my feelings when you saved my life, instead of when you gave me that oil,” he said.

“Yeah, but that was stupid to say, I wasn’t serious-”

“ _Lance,”_ he said, and Lance closed his mouth again. He tapped his finger gently on the side of Lance’s face. “The poison on that knife would have killed me, you know. It would have worked just as fast in me as it did in you when you jumped in front of that knife for Shiro, except we got you to the pod quickly enough before it began to take effect.”

“But I didn’t get you to a pod quickly enough,” said Lance, a wrinkle of confusion appearing between his eyebrows. “It was the bleeding that became the real problem. I thought- maybe the poison didn’t affect your Galra biology-”

Keith shook his head.

Lance blinked. He searched Keith’s eyes. “I don’t understand.”

“It was the oil you gave me, Lance,” said Keith, and he felt his mouth quirk slightly. “It’s a solvent against poisons, remember? Hunk uses it to disinfect foreign foods. You gave me such a huge amount, it stayed in my system and burned off the poison. Or at least, that’s what Coran said.”

Lance stared at him. 

“Your prank saved my life, Lance,” Keith said. “You got me to a pod fast enough for the bleeding, and you saved me from the poison on April Fool’s Day.”

“I,” Lance started.   

“ _So,”_ Keith said, and he could feel himself full-on smiling now. “I did tell you my feelings when you saved my life. Technically.”

Lance opened his mouth again, then closed it. Finally, dropped his head forward into Keith’s chest, forcing Keith’s hand into his hair. “I can’t believe you won on a _technicality.”_

“How am I _winning?”_ Keith said incredulously, though he was grinning and definitely feeling like he won.

“My prank was a total failure.”

“What? I just said it saved my life.”

“I was supposed to trick you. I was supposed to laugh at you, and you were supposed to be mad, and then we were supposed to laugh together and it would go down in the history of great April Fool’s jokes,” Lance said. “Instead, it’s up there with the paprika bun incident.” He frowned.

Keith looked at him.

“I’m disappointed, okay!” Lance said. He pushed his head back into Keith’s shirt.

“Lance,” Keith said after a pause, untangling their hands and, in what felt like another bold move, wrapped both of his arms around Lance’s shoulders, pulling him closer until Lance had to turn his face to avoid his nose squishing against Keith’s collarbone. “That is the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard. In my entire life.”

Lance made a petulant sound against his chest.

Then, softly, into the stillness of Keith’s room, “I’m really glad I pranked you.”

New, almost giddy pleasure buzzed beneath Keith’s skin, because he was too. Feeling Lance’s breath against his skin, feeling this new, tentative delight in his own boldness and Lance’s reciprocation- he was really, really, very glad.

“I’m so glad,” Lance said again, and he was lifting his head, face a breath from Keith’s. His eyes found Keith’s again. “I’m glad I pranked you and you’re alive, I’m so glad you’re alive, I-”

Lance cut his own words off, and kissed him.  

Keith’s entire body dissolved into a million particles of light.

His mind emptied and everything – Lumior, the prank, their injuries, Voltron itself – felt a trillion miles away. Farther than that. Keith was in another galaxy, another dimension entirely, one full of light and the warmth of Lance’s lips. The longing Keith had felt trapped inside of himself for so long dissolved, set free into the brilliant depths of space. 

Lance kissed him again, and everything in Keith rose to the surface so quickly he surged forward, tightening his arms around the back of Lance’s neck and kissing him with so much force that Lance let out a little yelp.

“You are _not_ winning this one-” Lance said, and Keith smiled against his lips before Lance buried both of his hands in Keith’s hair and kissed him and kissed him.

“I thought our rivalry was over-” Keith managed to say.

Keith’s mind spun out into the stars as Lance pressed closer, laughing in his ear, and he felt as victorious as he ever had in his life.

 

*

 

Keith woke slowly.

At first, he assumed it was morning. His limbs felt loose and his eyes lacked the familiar itch of early-morning exhaustion from a night spent up too late, which was an unfamiliar sensation but not unwelcome.

He moved to shuck his blanket off of him, but he froze as his eyes slide down and he realized that it was not his blanket, but Lance’s jacket draped over him.

Keith blinked once, and then he was overtaken by an onslaught of exhilaration so intense that he almost felt _embarrassed_ in front of himself. He slid a hand up from beneath the jacket to rub it over his face, and he could feel himself smiling beneath his own palm.

“Get yourself together,” he muttered to himself, but as he remembered kissing Lance, he smiled harder.

He stood up, wondering what time it was, if Pidge had come out of her healing pod yet, and Zonia, and where everyone might be. He carefully folded Lance’s jacket over his arm and slipped on his boots and his own jacket, worn and familiar, like a second skin. He took a moment to be grateful that he wasn’t wearing it when he’d been stabbed.

The hall was quiet when he slipped out of his room. As he made his way to the med bay, the slices of light winding their ways through the hallways told him that it was still daytime, and he was glad. It made him feel lighter, calmer, somehow, after the night.

As he approached the med bay, he heard voices. The doors slid open and everyone looked up at him.

Keith froze, feeling oddly exposed with Lance’s jacket draped over his arm. Pale evening sunlight flooded the room with gold.

Then his eyes landed on Pidge, and she grinned at him. When her eyes flickered down at Lance’s jacket, her smile grew wider and she nudged the person beside her- who was, in fact, Lance himself.

Keith felt his heart kick in, but he kept his face impassive as he joined everyone, feeling almost shy, suddenly. He shook that feeling away immediately.

 Shiro gripped his shoulder and said, “How are you feeling, Keith?”

“Better,” Keith said, and he felt his face relax into a smile as he looked around at everybody – Hunk, Allura, Coran – and let himself bask in the fact they were all here, all alive. His finally let his eyes meet Lance’s, whose grin turned slightly crooked as he looked back, and Keith felt something particularly colorful bloom in his stomach.

“Good to see you, Pidge,” Keith said, reaching out to fist bump her.

“You too, Keith,” said Pidge. She looked tired, like she’d only just emerged from the pod, which was very likely, but she looked whole and healed and Keith was glad.

“So are we done with fatal wounds for now?” said Hunk from beside Keith, drawing everyone’s attention. “Because I’ve been pretty stressed out for the last twenty-four hours and I think we could all use a good meal, you know, to celebrate being…not dead.”

Shiro smiled. “That sounds great, Hunk. As soon as Zonia comes out of her pod, we’ll start putting together a plan to leave the Lumites in safe hands.”

“Safe hands?” said Keith. “Isn’t the government…” He trailed off. _Entirely corrupt? Done with?_

“Zonia wasn’t working alone,” said Allura. “We’re hoping that we can help her allies within the government to secure leadership peacefully.”

“What about the Galra?” Keith asked. “When they find out-”

“We’ll get to that, Keith,” said Shiro. “Once Zonia wakes up.”

But how long would that take? Could the Galra already know what happened? Where was the queen and the rest of the Lumites who sided with the Galra?

Keith felt a hand come down on his shoulder and jumped. He looked up at Hunk.

“Dude, chill out,” he said, not unkindly. “I can practically hear your thoughts. I’ll get started on that meal before we talk it out. You haven’t even eaten since coming out of the pod, have you?”

“Lance brought me- ” Keith started and broke off, feeling his face going red, eyes darting involuntarily to the jacket in his arms. Across the circle, Lance’s cheeks were faintly pink.

“That’s sweet, guys,” Hunk said, catching the look between them. There was a little too much fondness in his voice for Keith’s comfort, and he did not appreciate the cooing coming from Pidge’s direction.

“Nothing like a near-death experience to bring two young lovers together,” said Coran, voice warm and affectionate. “That nearly happened to me, once. My love’s name was Alevana and she had the prettiest eyes in all of Altea. Except, well, she faked her death and-”

“Okay!” said Lance, clapping his hands together, face now bright pink. Keith could feel his own blush working its way down his neck. “Hunk, buddy, you gonna go make that meal? I’m starving.”

“I’m on it,” said Hunk, saluting him and turning toward the doors.

“I’ll help,” said Pidge, following.

“You really should rest, Number Five-” said Coran, dashing after her.

“I’ll go…” Allura stuck a finger in the air. “…decide what we’re all going to drink! That will lighten Hunk’s responsibilities.” She hurried out of the room.

The four mice scurried by Keith’s feet, squeaking, and he got the impression that they were going to go set the table.

Shiro looked at him, eyes warm, and squeezed his shoulder a second time. “Happy for you, man.”

Keith felt his face go scarlet. To his further embarrassment, Shiro cast a smile at Lance and nodded. Finally, he left the room, doors whooshing shut behind him.

“Glad _that’s_ over with,” said Lance, shaking his head and immediately crossing the room to him. Keith handed him his jacket back, and their hands brushed, sending a current of sparks up Keith’s arm. Golden light reflected off of Lance’s hair, and Keith wanted to touch him, but this was still so new, even after what had happened in his room, so he kept his hands by his sides.

“Yeah,” Keith said, because he didn’t know what else he should say.

Lance’s eyes roamed over his face. “You look a lot better.” A tiny smile appeared on his lips.

Keith felt his lips itch to return it with a smile much bigger. “I feel a lot better,” he said, thinking of how he woke up beneath Lance’s jacket. “Thanks.”

Lance shrugged.

“You look better, too,” Keith said, because he did. The circles beneath his eyes had lightened somewhat, skin no longer puffy, and a familiar spark had returned to his eyes.

“I snoozed a little,” said Lance.

Keith nodded, glad, because Lance had needed it. But as Lance stood there in front of him, slipping his jacket back on, Keith’s skin began to hum with anticipation. He still didn’t know what to say.

Lance looked at him again. “You’re not a bad pillow,” he said, wagging his eyebrows.

It was a line, it was every inch of one of Lance’s lines, but pleasure bloomed from Keith’s chest to the tip of his toes, and he felt a blush rise to his cheeks.

Lance must have caught the look on Keith's face, because he ran a hand over his own face as his mouth curved into a grin. “ _Keith_ ,” he said, and when he dropped his hand there was a red flush over the bridge of his nose.

“What,” Keith said, his insides twisting like he’d exposed himself somehow. He crossed his arms.

“You can’t just- you can’t-” Lance sounded like he was slightly in pain, but he was blushing and grinning and he shook his head as he reached forward to pull Keith’s arms apart. “No, stop, none of that.”

Keith reluctantly let his arms fall back to his side as Lance slid two steps closer, practically in his space. Keith’s heart began a steady rhythm in his chest.

“You’re not as smooth as you think you are,” Keith said.

“Well, you’re more adorable than you think you are,” said Lance.

Keith opened his mouth to argue, but faltered as Lance’s words sunk in. “What-”

Lance cut him off with the press of his lips, warm and fleeting but enough to empty Keith’s brain of all rational thought.

“I _said,_ ” Lance said, pulling back, “you’re more _deplorable_ than you think you are.”

“Oh,” said Keith. “That’s what I thought you said.”

Lance’s cheeks were pink again, his hand loosely on Keith’s elbow, and Keith knew that he was no better. Keith wanted to kiss him again.

Before Keith could act on his urge, Lance sucked in a breath.

“I think it’s worth mentioning,” he said, breathing out his words as if they’d been on the tip of his tongue since the beginning of their conversation, “that even if you’d told me that, you know, that you- love me-” he said it casually, but his face turned slightly pinker at that, “on a normal day, I probably wouldn’t have believed you right away.”

Keith’s brow creased. “Why not?”

“Why not?” Lance raised his eyebrows and let out a laugh. “Keith- you’re just, you’re so- you’re _you_ , and no one’s ever returned my feelings before, not like this.”

“Everyone else is stupid, then,” Keith said, and he wanted to cross his arms again but Lance’s hand was still on his elbow. He thought, fleetingly, to the way Lance had sounded when he'd learned that Zonia had been using him all along. Everyone else  _was_ stupid, because Lance was so incredibly kind and loyal, he was smart and funny and his heart was always – _always –_ in the right place. He wished he knew how to say all of that out loud. “You’re- amazing, Lance. If no one else ever saw that, they’re stupid. They missed the best chance they ever had. But I guess- I’m selfishly glad for it. Because I get to be with you and they don’t.” He could feel his face burning all the way down to his neck.

When he looked up, Lance’s eyes were wide.  

That probably didn’t come out the right way, Keith thought distantly.

But then a smile was blooming on Lance’s face in the light streaming through the window, and his eyes were so bright Keith didn’t think he’d be able to stand it if they ever had a reason to look sad again. Lance was beautiful, he was brighter than any star, and Keith _loved_ him.

Keith leaned forward, letting Lance’s hand fall from his elbow as he reached up and brought his hands to either side of Lance’s face. And then he was kissing Lance because he could, because Lance wanted him to, because if Keith, of all people, had been given this chance, he didn’t want to waste it for a second.

Lance melted against him immediately, soft as the inside of a toasted marshmallow.

His lips were warm and sweet and when he parted them against Keith’s, Keith felt something inside of him _click._

Keith had never felt himself go quite on fire like this, had never been so happy to have another body so close, had never known there could be anything _like_ this-

“Oh!”

Keith and Lance jumped apart so fast, it was as if someone had thrown a grenade between them. They both looked up.

Zonia stood outside of her pod, pale and wobbly. She was looking at them. A tiny smile appeared on her face. “How lovely.”

Then she tried to walk forward, and collapsed. 

 

*

 

“And that’s when the queen stabbed me in the stomach,” said Pidge, fork half in her mouth. Contrary to the horror of the situation, she sounded rather proud of the whole ordeal, eyes bright when they met Keith’s. _I got stabbed and lived,_ her smile seemed to say.

Keith couldn’t help the quirk of his own lips. He knew the feeling.

“Without Pidge, I’d be dead,” said Zonia, smiling and clasping her hands in front of her as they all sat around the table. She’d downed five of Hunk’s goo and noosberry parfaits and seemed to be thriving. Once Keith and Lance had managed to carry Zonia to the mess hall, an arm thrown around each of their shoulders, and get some food into her, her strength returned almost immediately.

“We want to help you in any way we can, Zonia,” said Allura, sitting at the head of the table. “We admire your bravery in getting the information to us.”

Zonia’s eyes fell to the table. Gentle daylight streamed across its surface from the big Castle windows overhead. “It would have been braver of me to get it to you sooner,” she said. “I couldn’t bring myself to risk it when Solire was nearby. Lance was very friendly, I had hoped that by letting him befriend me I would more easily be able to transfer the information.”

Lance’s knee bounced restlessly beneath the table beside Keith’s.

“You were brave,” said Shiro. “You still helped us. But how did you find out the queen’s plan?”

“I’ve been Solire’s assistant for seven decafeebs,” Zonia said, raising her eyes again. “And I’d heard legends of Voltron while I was growing up, they were stories my father would tell me before I went to sleep. The peace our planet has enjoyed for so long was established by Voltron, so when I heard that the queen wanted to help the Galra Empire defeat them, I knew it was for nothing good.

“Double crossing Voltron was not wide-spread information. I wasn’t even supposed to know it, but as Solire’s assistant, it was hard not to…overhear things. So one day I snuck into the control room and got into the system. It’s not very hard when you know the codes.” She shrugged, and Pidge gave a nod of agreement. “I copied the information.

“Our world loves Voltron for the peace it established here, and if the public at large found out, you can imagine the riots, the violence that would have broken out. Of course, the queen knew that once she had Zarkon on her side, she would have all the power she needed to overcome her own people. I didn’t want violence, I didn’t want to be ruled by the Galra again- I just wanted to keep the peace.

“There were others in the palace I could trust to help me,, and those who I knew I could not, and we formed a small faction of allies that would…cause trouble, at times, to keep the queen’s plan from moving forward. We tried to infiltrate the system to stop her from sending you message for help. She knew we existed, but she didn’t quite know who, exactly, we were. Needless to say, by the time she managed to reach you, she’d taken inspiration from us ‘rebels.’” Zonia made a face.

“I’d told the others to stay on their guards so we could pass the information to you when the queen managed to arrange for your visit, but when Lance got…very friendly, I knew I’d had the advantage.”

“Who knew Lance’s flirting would come in handy for once?” said Pidge.

“Hey!” Lance said, pointing a finger at her. “Just because _you_ have never reaped the benefits before doesn’t mean-”

“Ugh, Lance,” Hunk groaned.

But Keith could feel Lance’s knee bouncing even faster beside him. Tension was running beneath Keith’s own skin, and he knew he had to speak up.

“It doesn’t matter,” he cut in. “I ruined Zonia’s plan.”

“Keith,” said Shiro. “We don’t blame you for that. You were protecting your teammate.”

 _I was watching him because I was jealous,_ Keith knew he would never bring himself to say. Shame twisted in his stomach.

But when he looked at Zonia, she was smiling. Her lashes were naturally long, eyes a deep, honey gold with flecks of pink sparkling in the late afternoon sunlight. He could understand why Lance had chosen to flirt with her.

“I should have known better than to assume engaging in flirtation with this one would be harmless,” she said, nodding at Lance. “He’s very handsome. I think you’ll agree.”

Keith felt himself flush as Pidge disguised a snort as a cough. Hunk thumped her on the back.

“I just- saw you pull the disc out and I thought it was a weapon,” he said, suddenly wishing they weren’t having this conversation in front of everyone.

“It’s important to have your friend’s back,” said Zonia, nodding at him. “I wouldn’t have trusted me either.” Her gold eyes turned serious, steady on his own. “If I _had_ been untrustworthy, you would have saved his life. You would have regretted doing nothing even more, Keith.”

Keith felt Lance’s knee knock in to his beneath the table, once, twice, and then it stayed there, a warm, solid presence.

“Our intentions and doing the right thing don’t always align the way we want them,” Zonia said. She glanced at Lance apologetically. Then Zonia smiled at Keith again, and something in him calmed significantly.

He nodded.

“I’m glad you two worked everything out, too,” she said, and winked. “Quite thoroughly, I might add.”

Hunk snickered as Allura gave them a warm, beaming smile, and Keith wanted to sink into the ground again. Then Lance found his hand beneath the table, and Shiro was smiling at them as well, and, okay, this wasn’t the worst thing that could have been happening.

Keith curled his fingers around Lance’s and held on.

 

*

It took a few weeks to get Lumior back on its feet.

The only casualty had been Solire, amazingly. Many innocent victims of glass and stray lasers were brought to the healing pods in the Castle, but nothing fatal.  

“The queen hurled that knife of hers right at Zonia, but Pidge darted in front of her, you know, like you did with Shiro,” said Hunk, looking at Lance.

Lance glanced at Keith. _Like you did with me,_ his eyes said. Keith shrugged it off. That’s what Paladins did; they saved those on their team.

Zonia thought it was right to put the queen and her comrades in prison instead of executing them. “It’s what she would have done to us, had she known which of us were rebelling against her,” she said.

“Would you like to put them to death?” Shiro had asked, quietly.

Zonia did not need to think about it. “No,” she said. “I am not her. _We_ are not her.”

When Zonia and her allies, now leaders _,_ took charge of the Lumite government, it was hardly a surprise that the Galra chose that moment to stop by.

“Zarkon? Piece of cake,” Lance said as they ran to the hangar. “We took on gunmen while wearing _silk,_ we can handle anything now.”

Keith couldn’t help but laugh at that. Lance glanced over, grinning, and grabbed him by the wrist and pressed a very sound kiss to his lips before they split up for their respective lions.

“Save some action for the rest of us out there, hotshot,” Lance murmured as he pulled away.

Keith leaned in again, lips warm and soft. “No promises.”

Lance kissed him once more. The others were surely in their lions and time was getting short. “If we win there’s more where this came from.”

Keith smirked. Zarkon didn’t have a chance.

 

*

 

They landed back on Lumior a short while later, the Galra retreating with their tails between their legs. Keith found himself wrapped in Lance’s arms, his own hands buried in Lance’s hair, damp with sweat, helmets at their feet and adrenaline swirling in their veins. He was fairly certain a better victory kiss had never been had.

And he thought: even if things went wrong, at least I’d know this, and Lance would know it too.

*

 

“Thank you so much,” said Zonia, grasping Allura’s hands before turning to Shiro, then Hunk, eyes glassy and grateful. “I don’t know how we can ever repay you.”

“Voltron requires no payment,” Allura said. They stood in front of the Castle, Voltron and Zonia’s allies alike. Silky evening light shone through the newly built Palace.

“Yeah, all we really ask for is that you don’t side with the Galra,” said Lance, winking.

“That we can promise,” she laughed. “You really are very funny, Lance.”

Lance’s eyes slid sideways toward Keith. “Sorry, but, ah, the cargo on this ship is no longer free, so to speak.”

“Oh my god,” said Pidge as Keith felt his face begin to flame.

“I’m very aware,” Zonia said, a sparkle in her eye. ”I just wanted to make sure you know that even had I not been using you to save my planet, I still find you to be a lovely person.”

Lance’s cheeks pinked. “Oh. Thanks. Now that’s a line I’ve never heard before.”

“Because it’s not a line,” Keith muttered. Zonia turned to him, beaming.

“You two are such a fantastic pair. I’m so grateful for all the good that was able to come out of this,” she said. On Keith’s other side, Hunk made a noise of agreement.

Coran nodded sagely. “The bond between two Paladins is like no other bond. Why, even Alfor and Zarkon-”

“Coran!” said Allura, grabbing his arm. She pulled him toward the Castle. “It was lovely helping you rebuild your city, Zonia. I’m afraid the rest of the universe needs us.”

“Of course,” Zonia said, falling back into line with her people beside her. “Thank you for all your help, Paladins.”

They bowed their heads in farewell. The last of the evening sun cast long shadows behind them, their faces full of light.

 

*

 

“Hey there, beautiful.”

Keith looked up, automatically glancing around the room as Lance walked in. The windows no longer flooded the Castle with the dreamy light of Lumior, replaced instead with the familiar inky black and swirling nebulas of deep space

Lance stopped and put a hand to his chest. “Wow,” he said. “ _Wow._ Ouch, that hurts. Definitely something I need to work on.”

Keith drew his eyebrows together, frowning. “What are you talking about?” His eyes met Lance’s, and his heart gave an increasingly familiar lurch of not just wanting, but _having._

Lance walked over, stopping right in front of Keith where he sat on the couch. His knife, a rag, and a bottle of polish rested on the cushion beside him. A tablet full of Altean games sat in his hand, on pause.

“I _said,”_ Lance said pointedly, looking into Keith’s eyes and nudging his knee with his own. “Hey, beautiful.”

A swoop of pleasure washed over Keith, and he felt heat rise to his cheeks. “Oh.”

Lance groaned and threw himself down on the couch beside him. “You looked around like there was someone else in the room I was talking to!”

“Well, I’m still not used to people saying those things to _me,_ ” said Keith, cheeks burning.

“I finally have a boyfriend to spoil with words whenever I want and he doesn’t realize I’m talking to him,” Lance muttered, arm draped melodramatically over his eyes, like an old Victorian woman who'd caught a glimpse of her own bare ankles. “So much conditioning to reverse.”

“You’re being dramatic,” Keith said.

“Keith, beautiful. Gorgeous. My shooting star who illuminates the galaxies-”

“Stop.” Keith punched him in the shoulder.

Lance let his arm fall back to his side, sighing. “Well, I guess if I ever heard _you_ say that, I’d assume you were talking to your knife.”

“That’s because I would be talking to my knife.”

“Mean!” Lance said, throwing his arm over his eyes again. “I knew I’d never end up with someone who appreciates my beauty.”

Keith sighed. He had never been sure that he’d end up with anyone, never mind someone like Lance.

He was met with little resistance as he tugged Lance’s arm off his face. He leaned over and kissed him before he could say anything else stupid.

Lance’s lips were pink and his cheeks were flushed when he pulled away, and he was staring at Keith like there was nothing else worth looking at in the universe. Keith’s pulse picked up. For the millionth time, he thought of how it was an utter _miracle_ that he’d ended up with Lance.

“I’m not really the beautiful one, anyway,” Keith said without thinking, and then kissed him again to hide his own blush.

Lance let himself be kissed once, twice, three times, body melting into the cushions beneath Keith’s hands, soft and sweet, before he began to kiss Keith back again.

“I formally object,” he murmured as Keith kissed his cheek.

“Don’t care,” Keith said, and kissed him on the mouth again.

How Keith existed without Lance’s lips before, he didn’t know.

“Really, though,” Lance said twenty minutes later, the two of them spread out along the entirety of the couch, Keith’s knife moved safely to the ground near their feet. “ _You_ didn’t have to see you at that ball.”

Keith looked up, head tucked cozily between the back cushion of the couch and Lance’s waist. “What?”

“Keith,” Lance said. He waved the hand that wasn’t in Keith’s hair through the hair. “You looked… _ethereal.”_

Keith rolled his eyes.

“I’m serious!” Lance said, almost indignant. “With those dumb stars in your hair…” Lance sighed wistfully, like the memory brought him a sweet kind of pain. He grasped at a lock of Keith’s hair before letting go and brushing his fingers along Keith’s ear.

“You…wouldn’t look at me,” Keith said, remembering how Lance’s eyes kept bouncing away from him.  

Lance didn’t say anything for a moment, his fingers grazing the ends of Keith’s hair absently. The room was quiet but for the gentle hum of the Castle, space an ever-vast presence out the windows, wild and silent and full of stars. “I thought you didn’t return my feelings, you know?” he finally said.

Keith looked back up at him.

“It was like…you were so completely beautiful, so completely out of bounds, I…wanted you so badly and I thought you’d found my feelings to be a joke,” he shrugged, but it was half-hearted. “And you kept trying to talk to me and be near me, looking like some… gorgeous fiery angel, and it was like…I don’t know, knives in my chest.” He paused, then shrugged. “You can call me out for being dramatic again if you want.”

Keith pushed himself up. “No, Lance,” he said as Lance’s hand fell from his hair. He caught it and grasped it in his own hand instead, glove against skin. “I had no idea.”

“Well of course you wouldn’t,” Lance said, and shrugged again, like he was getting impatient to move on to the next subject. 

“I’m sorry,” said Keith, squeezing Lance’s hand.

Lance met his eyes, and a bit of a smile returned to his face. “I thought we were done with the sorrys,” he said. “And, you know, at least I got to hear you say you _thought_ you loved me while you looked like that.”

Keith groaned. “Will you let that go? I was nervous.”

Lance smiled, eyes bright, like it delighted him to his core to know that he made Keith nervous.

“Stop it,” Keith said.

“Stop what?” Lance said, smiling wider and lacing their fingers together, Keith’s glove absorbing the warmth of Lance’s hand.

Keith didn’t answer him. He looked down at their hands, his heart beating strong in his chest. “You were gorgeous,” he said.

“ _You_ didn’t seem to have trouble looking at _me,”_ Lance said, joking, but there was a hint of pink to his cheeks that told Keith he was pleased by the compliment.

Keith thought of the gems in Lance’s hair, the fabric that moved like the surface of a lake, the shimmering paint high on his cheeks. “That’s because I didn’t want to…stop looking at you.”

Lance’s cheeks evolved from pink to bright red.

“I…well, you’re always gorgeous,” Keith said, shrugging. He’d gotten better with being bold when it came to Lance, especially with his words, especially since he knew how Lance loved them. It was intimidating and exhilarating at the same time. “You’ve always been, like…the brightest part of a room. Not just your appearance, but you as a person.”

The blush spread to Lance’s ears.   

Keith squeezed his hand. After a second thought, he brought Lance’s hand to his mouth and kissed the back of his palm.

Lance’s blush traveled over the bridge of his nose. Keith lowered their hands, the bundle of nerves in his stomach evolving into something more relaxed and content. He really wanted to kiss him again, this time on the lips. Because he could.

And because he didn’t quite know what to do with the way Lance was looking at him.

Keith frowned slightly. “What?”

Lance shook his head, remnants of pink still tinging the tips of his ears. “Nothing, I-” He shook his head again, as if trying to clear it. “You- you’re,” he started, and then he leaned forward and kissed Keith.

“I’m what?” Keith said when they broke apart.

“Not as bad with romance as I thought you were,” Lance said, having gained is words back, and Keith rolled his eyes. His eyes were still closed. “But I assume you picked that all up from me.” A smile curled on his lips.

Keith opened his mouth to say something just as mocking back, but Lance began talking again. “And I don’t know what to say when you do things like that,” he said, words coming out in a breath, the tips of his cheeks reddening again.

Keith’s stomach curled pleasantly. He pressed his lips together in a smile and raised his eyebrows. “Would you like me to stop?”

“Shut up. No.” He kissed Keith again.

Keith smiled, letting him. He was capable of making Lance speechless. He faintly wondered if anyone else in the universe could say that. The thought made him nearly giddy.

Afterward, once they’d broken apart, Lance managed to say, lips thoroughly kissed and reddened, “But I’m still the romantic one.”

Keith huffed. “Does everything have to be a competition?”

“Of course not,” Lance said, smoothing a bit of Keith’s hair where it had been sticking up. “Our rivalry is a win-win these days, anyway.”

“What does that mean?”

“My victory is your victory,” Lance said simply. “Your victory is my victory. You score romance points, I score romance _d_ points.”

“Well, okay,” Keith said. He wanted to say that his romance points should be worth more, seeing as Lance’s reaction had been so tremendous, but he wasn’t sure he cared to listen to the intricacies of the score system right then.

“We both win, babe,” Lance said, and kissed him on the cheek, looking pleased.

Keith smiled. He liked the sound of that.

 

*

 

“You’re going to lose so bad, you’re going to throw yourself out the wind tunnel in shame,” Lance said, a terrible smirk on his face.

“Oh yeah?” said Keith, and then he kicked out the ball from beneath Lance and grabbed it.

“You’re cheating!” Lance shouted as Keith turned around and bolted. “HEY!”

“Keith!” Pidge yelled from the other side of the hall, holding another, larger ball. As soon as Keith was close enough, he tossed his, and she threw hers.

She caught it and made a run for it, but as soon as Keith caught his, he stopped in place. He glanced around, eyes scanning the hall. Hunk was just close enough that-

“Hey!” he said when a third ball hit him in the side and the one he was holding flew from his hands. The mice skittered around his feet, trying to keep it from rolling back over to Keith. Lance came running by, hands empty, and grabbed it without pausing for a glance.

“No!” Keith said. Lance cackled and disappeared up the hall after Pidge.

Hunk started scooping up the mice, but the big green one glanced at Keith.

“Come on, come on,” Keith said, crouching down and holding out his hand.

“No- !” said Hunk. The other three skittered around his shoulders, Hunk careful not to let them fall as he made a reach for the green one.

But it was too late. The green mouse tagged Keith’s hand and he was free. He grabbed the last ball and made a break for it.

“NO!” said Hunk behind him, but Keith smirked. He knew he was fast.

Keith rounded the corner, where Pidge and Lance stood just before the finish line.

“Hunk! Come on- no!” Lance said when he saw him, eyes widening.

Keith levered his arm back. “Pidge, catch!”

“Got it!” Pidge jumped, grunting as the second ball flew into her arms. She managed to balance them both, and Keith whooped before rounding on Lance.

Lance clutched the final ball to his chest as if it was akin to his own child. Keith stopped in front of him. This would be easy.

“Never,” Lance said, holding the ball tighter. Keith could hear Hunk’s footfalls approaching down the hall.

Keith smiled, then leaned in close.

“You’re not that pretty, Pretty Boy,” Lance said. “Hunk and I are going to win, and-”

Keith kissed him very firmly on the lips.

Lance did not relinquish his hold on the ball.

“Ha!” Lance said when Keith pulled away. “Bet you thought that would work, didn’t you, but I’m not that easily-”

Keith grabbed the ball and it slid from Lance’s arms easily.

“YES!” Pidge said as they both dashed over the finish line, all three balls in hand.

“No!” Hunk said, stopping beside Lance, hands on his knees. “Aw, Lance.”

“That’s not- that’s not fair!” Lance said, pointing at Keith, his face scarlet.

“I didn’t break any rules,” Keith said, balancing the ball against his hip and grinning.

“That’s because there are hardly any rules,” said Pidge, adjusting her glasses and smiling. The mice had swarmed to her feet in congratulations.

“Whatever,” said Lance, crossing his arms. “I demand a rematch.”

“Are you sure you want to do that to yourself?” Keith raised his eyebrows.

“Yes,” said Lance, looking him dead in the eyes. Keith did always admire his pertinacity.

Lance walked over so he was standing directly in front of Keith. “New match starting! Hunk, get behind me.”

Hunk and Pidge took their positions.

“Three,” Lance said, counting down. A smirk came over his face. Keith’s heart kicked up, his body ready to fight again.

“ _Two_ -”

Keith tightened the ball between his hands.

“One!”

Lance leaned in and kissed him, quick as a flash, warm lips against his own, and then the ball was sliding through limp fingers and Lance was running in the opposite direction.

“Wh- hey!” Keith said as Pidge groaned.

“The fooler becomes the fooled!” Lance shouted over his shoulder, his grin wide and wild and bright.

Keith ran after him, lips tingling from the kiss, mind ready for another win, body alive, heart on fire.  

Lance’s laughter echoed down the hall ahead of him.

Keith was going to win this.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> THE END!!
> 
> I hope you guys enjoyed this and thank you so much for reading!! I so appreciate all of your comments and kudos and bookmarks, you guys are the best.
> 
> You can find me at [hugoweasley](http://hugoweasley.tumblr.com/) on tumblr, or chat with me on [curious cat!](https://curiouscat.me/peanutbutterapple)


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